I was disgusted and disappointed, to say the least, when I read the news story that “the Quezon City government will identify ‘dangerous areas,’ especially those prone to floods...” (Inquirer, 9/30/09); that Mayor Feliciano “Sonny” R. Belmonte Jr., better known as SB, “has ordered the city’s 142 barangay captains to assess their areas of responsibility and identify critical and dangerous spots in times of flooding.”

In his ninth year as QC’s chief executive it’s only now that SB thought of this need, why? Is it because since he assumed office on July 1, 2001 he has been busy in some other things, such as purchasing vehicles which bear his favorite Serbisyong Bayan logo painted in flaming red on the vehicles?

Pardon my mentioning this: The very first thing my wife and I did when we arrived from abroad (after helping organize Filipino teacher retirees) was to pay our real estate taxes for 2009 and 2010 for a mortgaged old house and a residential lot.

For senior citizens like us who spent the best and most productive years of our lives as public school teachers, we don’t mind paying taxes despite our meager and often delayed monthly pension from the Government Service Insurance System. That is our civic duty.

But I think it is also our civic duty to remind the mayor and the city treasurer, Victor B. Endriga, to look after the welfare of Quezon City residents. For example, when we went to city hall to pay our taxes, we saw a number of counters that were unmanned. So people had to wait so long for their turn to be attended.

Likewise, it is our civic duty to tell city government officials about the difficulty senior citizens go through in getting their identification cards and medical booklets which are needed to purchase medicines with some discount. Truth to tell, we had to spend for the photocopying of our booklet (which has on its cover a collage of colored photos of the mayor in various poses). Worse, for this we had to join a long line under the scorching heat of the sun to avail ourselves of the services of an “exclusive” entrepreneur doing business right outside the Office for Senior Citizens Affairs.

Quezon City residents also suffer from uncollected garbage: e.g., the huge pile of garbage near the Tandang Sora market and at the plaza of Barangay San Vicente in the fourth congressional district which SB represented as congressman for nine years.

For the last several years, SB and and Endriga have been claiming and proclaiming that Quezon City is the richest city in the Philippines. That being the case, why not allot a reasonable amount for the effective delivery of basic services to QC residents? Also, they should earmark funds for increasing the cost-of-living allowance of the downtrodden teachers who are overworked but underpaid. Is this asking too much from the richest city government?

—EUSEBIO S. SAN DIEGO,
founder, Kapisanan ng mga Gurong Retirado (Kaguro) and
former president, Quezon City Public School Teachers Association, essandiego@ymail.com