Batas Mauricio
REALLY, millions of Filipinos have no other choice but to agree that the Department of Transportation, even if its original mandate that it should also cover communications appeared to have been taken out from it already after the installation of the Duterte government, has become one of the biggest non-performers under President Duterte, as House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez was reported to be saying publicly.
Transportation Secretary Art Tugade must truly be smarting from the claim of Alvarez that it is only the transportation department which has not shown any beneficial changes during the first 100 days of President Duterte’s presidency, but he cannot deny that the major problems that hounded the fading days of the Aquino government under the defunct Department of Transportation and Communications continue to bedevil the Duterte government, with no solution in sight even.
Traffic remains at standstill every day of the week, hopelessly wasting gasoline and people’s money and time. License plates of vehicles, including the number “4” plate which Alvarez is entitled to as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, remain unissued. Drivers continue to be deprived of their plastic license cards too, even if they have already paid for them.
I really believe Tugade has shown himself to be hopelessly incapable to solve the transportation problems that continue to make life for Filipinos harder by the day. The fact is that, this early in his lordship as the transportation secretary, he appears to have ran out of creative solutions to the traffic mess that plagues the streets even on Saturdays and Sundays. Why do I say this?
Well, Tugade has been quoted by media as saying that the traffic problem in the NCR is really non-existent, but is just a “state of the mind”--that is, traffic is a problem that is present only in the minds of NCR residents who, he said, have come around using heavy traffic as a convenient excuse to justify their being late for work and their appointments.
This claim of Tugade to me represents a fantastic confusion of his mind. It indicates that, just after a few days as the secretary of the Department of Transportation, Metro Manila’s traffic problem has made him so problematic that he has detached himself from the reality that vehicles travelling in Metro Manila thoroughfares no longer simply crawl their way through, but have become immobile for very long hours.
Traffic only in the minds of Filipinos? Well, Tugade must ask Filipinos whether they are spending more for gasoline and other petroleum products because it has taken them longer to navigate through the streets of Metro Manila.
He must also ask Metro Manilans whether they are able to produce anything during the times that they are held up by slow-moving (or unmoving) traffic especially during rush hours.
I am sure that Tugade will learn, if he takes it upon himself to truly know the traffic situation in Metro Manila without the trappings of his official position, that traffic really is not just in the minds of Filipinos but is on the streets, really. I reiterate, Tugade should either resign on his own, or be fired by Duterte. What say you, Mr. President?
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Teachers, administrators, and the schools where they are teaching, whether public or private, here’s an important piece of information when the students under their instruction, supervision, or custody cause damage to third parties: they, not the parents of the students, are primarily liable to pay the damage caused by the students.
This was stressed by my wife, former Judge Angelina Domingo Mauricio, during a lecture on peace and conflict resolution.
Here is a part of the lecture delivered by my wife: Article 218 of the Family Code provides that teachers, administrators, and the school where they are employed or are teaching are given parental authority and responsibility over their students. Note must be made that it is not just authority that is granted to teachers and administrators, and their school.
More importantly, they are simultaneously given responsibility over the actions or behavior or conduct of the students under their supervision, instruction, or custody. This authority and responsibility shall apply to all authorized activities, whether inside or outside the premises of the school, entity or institution.
Her lecture also dwelt on the legal effect of teachers, administrators, and the school being vested with special parental authority over their students: they shall be principally and solidarily liable for damages caused by the acts or omissions of the unemancipated minor.
The parents, judicial guardians or the persons exercising substitute parental authority over said minor shall only be subsidiarily liable. This means that teachers, administrators, and the school itself shall have the obligation to pay first, and it is only when it is proved that they are insolvent or have no capacity to pay that the parents of the students shall be required to pay.
That notwithstanding, the Family Code provides a defense for the teachers, administrators and schools, when they are being required to pay for those damages, and it is that, they exercised the diligence of a good father of a family in their supervision, instruction, and custody of their students, to see to it that the children will act appropriately all the time. This will depend on a case to case basis, on what really happened.
E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com
