Earthshaking

I was at home working online when the earthquake happened last Monday. I instinctively rushed out together with my house help to join our neighbors, mostly housewives, children and helpers who are usually left in the house on weekdays. Everybody looked anxious, especially the mothers who had to take charge of the situation in the absence of their husbands.

While waiting for the tremor to stop, I couldn’t help but recall what happened to Japan last year and almost instinctively, recalled the killer tsunamis that claimed thousands of lives and wrought incalculable damage the Japanese economy. I think the mass hysteria last Monday could be attributed to the images of the Japan tragedy that we saw on TV in March last year. The earthquake switched on the mental pictures (giant waves destroying buildings, tossing cars and ships like toys; rampaging waters that killed people crossing its path) embedded in our minds so that when the earthquake struck, we were already thinking of a double whammy.

I have been living in Cebu for 40 years now and can’t remember strong earthquakes ever striking this province. What happened last Monday was a wake-up call. Local government units were unprepared to address an earthquake disaster. People had to rely on radio and TV broadcasts for information. Some were not helpful actually and only caused people to become confused and panicky. The legitimate ones did not reach those who, at the time the earthquake struck, were scampering for safety outside their homes and offices. Fear of death is a strong feeling and can make a person lose control.

What is unfortunate is that despite the high literacy of the Cebu population, people were quick to believe that a tsunami was going to happen two or three hours after an earthquake. The mass hysteria could not have had happened if the local government took command of the situation.

The city and the province should have immediately rounded up heads of concerned state agencies like the Philvolcs, Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, Coastguard, etc., and assembled them in their office where they can rapidly issue correct and updated information, including guidelines for victims trapped in areas isolated by the disaster. Media will only be too happy to gather needed information in one setting. Quick response to disaster-related mishaps is quite simply, management of available resources.

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Some earthshaking developments descended on our neighboring country Singapore, and I wonder if President Benigno Aquino III and lawmakers who support the Reproductive Health Bill are paying attention.

Former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew raised fears last week that the Singaporean economy could be damaged because the country’s population growth is experiencing a downward trend.

The drift in the Lion City is towards a single lifestyle abetted by artificial birth control means resulting in an “almost record-low birth rate of 1.2 from last year,” according to the Straits Times.

Because of prevailing low birth rates, Singapore will lean on immigrants to “make up the numbers,” that is, encourage the entry of immigrants to support the economy. The pressure of sustaining the national work force and a graying population in the next 30 to 50 years, or even the steep decline of the Chinese-Singaporeans to half the present population in the next 18 to 20 years is so staggering that Lee needed to draw up a replacement rate breakdown: 1.08 for Chinese, 1.09 for Indians and 1.64 for Malays —with 2.1 as the benchmark replacement rate.

Lee recalls that when he was Premier in 1959, there were more than 62,000 babies born every year, but since then the birth rates have become very low (about 36,000 in 2011).

Lee’s approach is copied from Europe, where a demographic free fall has also resulted in liberal policies with respect to working immigrants. In Europe, Asians and Africans gain employment as domestic helpers and street or farm laborers because the natives have become fewer and older and are not about to take up manual jobs. However, there is growing disenchantment among the immigrant sector because of low wages and lack of health care benefits, oftentimes resulting in neighborhood violence. To make matters worse, the European economy is struggling, and many resent the presence of immigrants who have climbed the economic ladder.

Singapore’s solution to current low population is to replace whatever is lacking in the 2.1 percent birth rate with immigrants. If this all that Lee can think of, it can only mean that he has nothing new to offer. How tragic, especially because as the European experience has shown, the solution has created more problems.