Killing The Dead, Poisoning TheLiving

If this were a boxing match with the referees still tallying their scores, we would already be punch-drunk, ready to throw in the towel, and maybe even burn down the gym for good measure.

There is a revelation from the Philippine Coast Guard that several years ago a multi million peso project to install a sophisticated emergency maritime communication system complete with global positioning satellite links. But, the Coast Guard says, the project "became a white elephant due to project billing problems" with the supplier delivering the hardware but not the software to run the gadgetry!

The agency claims the ferry sinking could have been prevented of the project had not failed.

Meanwhile, five days after MV Princess of the Stars capsized off Romblon and Sibuyan islands, we are now belatedly being told that the ’ship of death’ also has in its bowels ten metric tons of the pesticide endosulfan with the solid crystalline poison packed not in sealed airtight containers but in plastic bags, inside ordinary carton boxes stacked in a 40-foot container van.
With this startling confession by the owners of the vessel during the Marine Board of Inquiry, authorities have hurriedly suspended the efforts to retrieve the remains of the dead still trapped in the ship’s overturned hull.
All the Navy frogmen and volunteer divers have been brought back to the surface lest the endusulfan packs burst, unless they already have, and rapidly contaminate the waters.
The Department of Health and the fisheries bureau have withdrawn, posthaste, their safety assurances about eating fish from the site of the tragedy to prevent possible poisonings.
These developments bear the signature of a corrupted system pockmarked by chronic neglect and utter disregard for the public welfare.
This truly compounds the public uproar and magnifies the apparent criminal negligence of Sulpicio Lines plus the massive regulatory incompetence of government.
Those already dead are being killed still while the living are seemingly lying prostrate, at the mercy of the powers that be!