Made by @saydie
Laws are made in order to protect people and was meant to serve their best interest in mind which includes banning things that it deemed to be harmful to us. But no country has ruled with a perfect government and there will always be things that they would overlook or made ridiculous laws. As a developing country, Philippines were not an exception from this and needs their policies in regards to banning and not banning things to be addressed.
Banning of Plastic
Our country has a serious problems regarding waste management. It is said that on a month, we were producing more than 1.5 million tons of waste, mostly made of plastic and still continues to increase as we continue to grow in population. This was extremely bad for our country considering that plastic is non- biodegradable making huge implications on the environment and on people's sanitary and health but not only that, plastic often clogs drainages resulting into flooding and as a country that experience an average of 25 typhoons per year, many of our cities would be flooded that if not make the roads unpassable, it causes huge traffic or stops the operations of the establishments.
As I travel going back home, I took the picture of the road flooded due to yesterdays rain but due to drainages clogged with plastic, the water is not subsiding even when the weather is very hot.
For our daily convenience, we often disregard the huge consequences that plastic could cause for us. Regardless of age and gender, everyone uses plastic whether it was the packaging of the snack we it or something that will carry all the stuff that we buy on the mall so it might seem that banning plastic was almost impossible. But upon visiting my Aunt in Los Baños, Laguna, The government there has implemented laws that regulates the use of single- use plastic and bans the use of Styrofoam containers and plastic bags as packaging materials and resort to woven bags we call Bayong and cloth bags known as katsa as well as paper bags as an alternative. Upon looking more in the internet, I say this Article that confirms at least 9 other places in my country which bans or regulates the use of plastic and if they can do this on their area, implementing this nationwide was very much possible if the national government would just focus their attention into it.
Liquor Ban on Election Day
Many things that I could think of in terms of lifting restrictions such as Medical Cannabis, the government has been working towards lifting their restriction. So if I have to say if there is something I want them to un-ban is the temporary ban of alcohol during the election day.
Kind of bias here since I also have some drinking habits.
By October 30th of this year, we will be holding our Barangay and SK elections which has been delayed by years because of the pandemic but finally, the people can decide whether they want to keep the past regime or welcomes a new one that will address the issues of the local community. During this time and on the last National elections, people were prohibited on carrying firearms in order to maintain the peace during the election period which is a right call in my opinion. However, the day before and after the election date, the selling, distribution and consuming alcohol was prohibited which in my opinion would make this law really absurd for various reasons.
For once, while there were incidents that was caused by too much consumption of alcohol, it would be less likely to be an election related incident and if they really want to stop alcohol- related incidents, they might as well completely ban alcohol and not just ban them on a certain date. Another reason was that, instead of completely focusing the manpower of the police on protecting the security of the voting precincts, they would need to allocate some of their manpower in inspecting establishments whether they sold alcohol or not and mobilize their unit if there are people reported to be drinking regardless of whether they were violent or not. Lastly, and what I think that make it the most absurd is that people who were found guilty of this can be sentenced between 1-6 years of imprisonment compared on normal days when they were drunk driving and was only served a ticket for citation.
As a Filipino citizen, I always adhere with my civil duties which includes voting which could sometimes take several hours of waiting time due to the large number of voters and that goes for a lot of people. So the least thing that the government needs to do was is to allow the people that perform their civil duties to spend the time that they have with what they want to do even if that includes drinking. Because after the election, people will be back on their work so at least let them chill and on their time.
That was it for this post. Thank you and see you at the next one!
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