EDITORIAL - Where is government when it is needed?

A few days ago, a massive fire nearly wiped out an entire Cebu City barangay. As usually happens after a fire, the homeless are housed in the only readily available government facilities suitable for the purpose – public school classrooms. But with absolutely nowhere else to go, the thousands of fire victims camping in those classrooms may have to stay there far longer than what is practical and necessary.

And that poses a very serious problem because those rooms are also being used by thousands of students who may consider themselves lucky to have classrooms in a country where high birth rates and decades of infrastructure neglect have made sure it will never catch up with a runaway classroom lack. But now even that luck may have run out because these students may have to give up classroom space for humanitarian reasons.

And to think that despite the severe classroom lack, and the lack of qualified teachers to handle new subjects, the government proceeded against all caution with its controversial K to 12 program, fired by nothing more than the singular resolve that it did not want to be among just two or three countries left in the world that did not have 12 years of basic education.

To the Philippines, appearance is everything. It had to have 12 years of basic education at all cost. It equates the quantity of years with quality, quality that can never stand scrutiny in light of the glaring reality that its K to 12 program is half-baked in many respects, but most glaringly in the lack of classrooms to teach K to 12 in, and the stunningly unqualified teachers forced to do such teaching.

And now reality bites even more ironically harder, as the few classrooms that students use in what their government says are for their world-class education will now have to be given up for fire victims. It is plain incredible how easily the unrelenting logic for K to 12 can be swept aside for no other reason than that the government is simply unprepared for anything as common as fire.

Time and again, in more ways than anyone can imagine, the Philippines has shown itself to be hopelessly unprepared for anything, either in the unexpected fates that occasionally befall it, or in the half-baked policies that it frequently embarks on knowingly and willfully. From typhoons weak to catastrophic, to small fires and raging infernos, to policies grand or benign, the country just cannot climb over the hump called unpreparedness.

Take Yolanda, the supertyphoon that slammed the Philippines with unprecedented strength three years ago. It simply defies logic that victims in their thousands would still remain homeless and unrehabilitated up to now, three years hence. Three years is three years. It is nothing short of criminal to be this far behind in the response. The sheer inability of government to respond quickly and adequately is just stunning. And yet so many want to join and lead government.