Missing booklets

I HAVE recently been given my senior citizen ID. Ill-informed, I thought I could use the card to get discounts for my medicine and grocery purchases. Only when I joined the senior lane at the supermarket did I learn that I had to show a grocery booklet where my purchases are to be recorded manually by an overworked cashier.

Embarrassed, I had to spend another P30 to visit the municipal building the second time. Only then—not when I was issued the card the first time—was I informed that I do need such booklets. Talk of efficiency. So I finally got my medicine booklet after sweating it out and spending P30 for jeepney and tricycle rides.

When I asked for the much-needed grocery booklet, the office head claimed that they ran out of copies, that if I wanted to have the booklet I had to go directly to the Quezon City Hall. The local OSCA wanted me to go all the way to the City Hall and inquire from the mayor’s office why there were no grocery booklets for senior citizens. Wow, isn’t it the duty of local OSCA officers to serve the elderly and not send them on an errand?

On the phone, one of Mayor Herbert Bautista’s Girl Fridays claimed that the booklets are still being printed. How long does it take to print those much-needed booklets, I asked. She was as clueless as I was. I don’t understand—for if the medicine booklets are ready, how come the grocery booklets are taking forever to finish?

I suspect the mayor doesn’t know the fishy reason why these booklets are being delayed; yet as show biz as the mayor is, he has his portrait printed on the cover of these booklets. Printing his face on the cover of the booklet must have taken only overnight. I hope the poor old senior citizen will not have died by the time Mayor Bautista’s booklets arrive.

—POMPEYO S. PEDROCHE,
pspedroche@msn.com