EDITORIAL - Enforcement difficult without monitoring

With Christmas just around the corner, the Department of Trade and Industry, in a television report on ANC, said there will be no price increases in Noche Buena items. But in the same television report, the DTI announced in the same breath that prices of ham, a Christmas favorite for Noche Buena, will be increasing. So what gives?

This is what happens when government merely pays lip service to the performance of its duties. It tends to talk through its hat, not meaning what it says and not knowing it even contradicts its own self. In a related report, the same agency said the price freeze that supposedly came into effect with the state of emergency declaration by the president is now over.

Why is it over when the president has not yet lifted his state of emergency declaration? Just because the president has ordered the dismantling of checkpoints does not mean he has lifted the emergency declaration. But let us not split hairs over that. The question to ask is whether the DTI really imposed a price freeze or was the price freeze just another lip service?

It is a matter of fact that during the supposed freeze some basic items that normally are covered-canned sardines, for example have seen their prices go up. But then, it is too late for the DTI to do anything about it, is there? It has already announced the price freeze over, so what has gone up despite the freeze will be something the public will just have to bear with.

The problem with situations like this is that enforcement cannot take place unless there is monitoring done. Almost every Filipino must have done some shopping for groceries and other provisions in his or her life. As such, they get to be aware of price movements. They know when the price of something today was different from the price of the same thing yesterday.

For the government then to say otherwise is to say it has not been in touch with the reality that confronts people daily. Otherwise, it would have made a number of apprehensions in relation to the price freeze it itself imposed. But there has never been any news about such apprehensions. It was as if everything was all hunky-dory, that everything is as fine as it can be.

But everything is not as fine as it can be. There are price movements every day, even during the time that the supposed price freeze was in effect. But without any monitoring, there can be no enforcing. And if government waits for complaints before acting, then there can never be any acting because Filipinos are never known to go out of their way to complain, especially over little increases like five centavos or ten centavos, never mind if, over time, this encourages more violations.