Food passes may not be so innocent at all

What follows in the next two paragraphs is something I cannot verify and cannot therefore guarantee to be true, hence this warning. But I will talk about it anyway because it hews closely to similar things I have personally observed to be true. I refer to a photo posted on Facebook showing a big truck in a road accident, its cargo of lumber spilling out. A question accompanied the photo, asking "What is wrong with this picture?"

It did not take long to figure what was amiss in the photo. While the cargo was lumber as plainly as the eye could see, the poster displayed very prominently on the windshield said "FOOD PASS" in big bold letters. Again, I do not know if the photo was tampered, if the poster on the windshield was photoshopped. What I can say with a straight face, though, is that I know for a fact that there are too many food passes for non-food vehicles.

My claim is easily verifiable. All one has to do is stand by the side of any street, with face mask of course, and watch the traffic go by. Because of the pandemic and the resulting protocols governing the movement of goods and people, many vehicles are required to sport passes defining their ability to pass through checkpoints. Among such passes is the food pass.

Believe it or not, but there are many vehicles sporting food passes that are not really food delivery vehicles. But because food is an essential commodity that is needed by everybody, it follows that there ought to be many food deliveries. And if there are many food deliveries, it follows further that there are many food passes. In fact too many for the actual food deliveries.

When there is a surfeit of anything, the extra can end up anywhere, often in places where they are not needed. But a food pass is very much needed, even by vehicles not involved in food deliveries. That is because when you sport a food pass, you probably get the easiest time through a checkpoint, next only to medical frontliners. A food pass is the thing to have at checkpoints.

Now, I do not know how to get a food pass without being involved in the food business or food deliveries. But I would presume it must be very easy, so easy in fact that it has become entirely possible for a lumber truck to sport a food pass, that is if the picture I said I could not verify turns out to be actually a faithful recording of an actual event.

Be that as it may, if you think some people were just out trying to make a fast buck out of selling extra food passes, which is what I very strongly suspect, then you are not really seeing the big picture. You probably think some people just want to go through checkpoints in a breeze. What probably did not occur to you, as described in the first two paragraphs, was that the truck in our story was carrying lumber.

Now think real hard. Why would a truck delivering lumber need a food pass to breeze through checkpoints? Is there something about the lumber that those delivering it would be in such hurry? Good that it is just lumber, even if something might be amiss in its delivery. What if it was something else, something that no less than President Duterte constantly says he is very angry about? Maybe Duterte should start looking into the food passes.