An impossible dream?

THE REMAINS of 13 Filipino women who were killed in Iraq during a fire that broke out in the hotel where they were working are now home.

Will that day ever come when we will stop sending our countrymen to work overseas because there are enough jobs here?

Will that day ever come when our leaders will protect foreign companies and individuals we have invited to our shores as investors and tourists?

We keep inviting foreigners to invest in the Philippines or come here as tourists yet we don’t give them enough assurance about their safety or a good business climate.

Many foreign companies which have heeded the invitation to invest in the Philippines find that some government agencies which are supposed to take care of them in fact make their stay difficult.

The police do not give enough protection to foreign tourists who are held up in the streets or robbed in their hotels.

Seeing the Philippines catch up with its more progressive neighbors seems an impossible dream.

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The presidential candidate who has vowed to eliminate crime and drugs—which bring about heinous crimes—is Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte.

The other candidates are just making motherhood statements on peace and order.

Here’s a guy who promises to:

Clean up the streets of criminals and drug pushers by restoring the death penalty and increasing the salaries of law enforcers.

Bring about peace in the countryside, particularly Mindanao, by inviting communist and Muslim rebels to the negotiating table.

Eliminate graft and corruption in government as he did at the Davao City Hall.

Yet Duterte is the most unlikely candidate to win the presidential race because surveys show him at the tail-end of the popularity surveys.

What a pity the Filipino people don’t know how to choose a true leader! (The latest SWS survey shows Duterte tied with Sen. Grace Poe in second place —Ed).

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It seems the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) is favoring a foreign company in the sugar quota allocation for the United States.

This year’s sugar quota to the US is estimated at P3.5 billion, sources in the sugar industry say.

SRA Administrator Regina Bautista Martin said her agency would award the quota to companies which already have sugar at the ports and ships to carry their cargo.

Ed and F Man, a Singapore-based firm, was given an allocation of 55,500 metric tons out of a total of 135,508 metric tons of sugar for the US this year.

Some sugar traders have complained that the Singapore firm doesn’t have a sugar cargo at the ports and the ships to carry it.

On the other hand, other companies which are locally-owned have named the ports where their sugar cargo would be loaded and the ships that would carry these, the sugar traders say.

There are two ports where the bulk of the locally-produced sugar set for export is loaded: Bacolod and Pulupandan. Neither of the two ports have shipments belonging to Ed and F Man.

Martin should explain why the foreign firm was given the biggest sugar allocation when it doesn’t have a sugar shipment ready to be loaded at the port and the ships to carry it.