We need to revise the National Building Code
For our special presentation on our show in Straight from the Sky, we bring you a continuation of our travelogue from our family cruise vacation in the Mediterranean. This is the last few video shows from that vacation. This time we bring you a show that few Filipino videographers have ever done, showing a documentary of two very famous and historical places, the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, both were devastated by the violent eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
Our trip to Pompeii and Herculaneum gave us an idea of how the Romans lived when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. and buried this ancient Roman City and later Herculaneum was discovered. Actually it is easier to tour Herculaneum because it is a much smaller town equally devastated, but many Roman paintings and frescoes still adorn many of its walls.
In Pompeii there are no bodies to be found as they have been moved to the museums, but in Herculaneum there are a lot of bones lumped in their boathouse trying to flee the volcanic eruption. So watch this very interesting show on SkyCable's channel 53 at 8 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV's channel 30 at 9 p.m. Monday and at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday.
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Is the mayor of a Local Government Unit the sole decision maker on whether a town or city should have limits on the height of buildings? This is a question being discussed in the coffee houses of Metro Cebu when Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña proposed to limit the heights of buildings. Because of this, the permit applications of 31 medium- and high-rise buildings have now been put on hold because of the fire that destroyed the Metro Ayala department store, which was only a six-story building.
Perhaps what Mayor Osmeña is looking for is a total overhaul of the National Building Code. We have been asking for its revision for many years now. The minimum width for our sidewalks was made when the population of the country was 20 million. Now it is too small. Rather than look for limiting building height we should look at revising the building code.
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If there is anything going on for Pres. Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte, it is his commitment to rid the bureaucracy, even to the highest level, of corruption. We have already seen him fire many officials for wrongdoing, including those top officials who have been using their positions for their personal advantage. Just on the first week of January, Pres. Duterte announced that he fired Maritime Industry Authority Administrator Marcial Quirico Amaro III due to excessive foreign trips.
The president just didn't fire Amaro for the heck of it, but the Office of the President got complaints from MARINA employees who told him that Amaro made a total of 24 foreign trips in a span of 13 months from 2016 to 2017. Meanwhile, Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office Chairman Jose Jorge Corpuz also resigned. Although he cited health reasons, we suspect that his resignation was due to the flak the PCSO got when PCSO General Manager Alexander Balutan spent P6 million for their Christmas party, which was held in Shangri-La.
What I would like to see happen is the Office of the Ombudsman come up with a report on the foreign/junket trips of top officials of the Aquino regime and perhaps we'll even find more officials doing junkets during the time of PNoy because he really didn't care if public officials used public money for their personal trips abroad.
This is why I salute Pres. Duterte for this very serious campaign against junketing public officials who go abroad on foreign trips but return and do nothing to improve the services in their respective offices. In short they went abroad supposedly to learn something useful that we could copy, but they end up not bringing home the bacon.
If the popularity of Pres. Duterte continues to rise, it is because he just doesn't say that he would do things, he is more than words! He is very unlike his predecessor whose theme in his governance was "kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap" but all for lip service!
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