SOME LAW enforcement officials are arguing that the minimum age for legal liability should be lowered, because criminals are using young children as drug mules.
I think that is a rather simplistic way of looking at the problem, to lower the age to make it easier to catch them.
I think that there is no problem with keeping the present age of 18 and above for legal liability in the Philippines, for as long as we are ready with the youth detention centers, and I do not mean jails or prisons.
I say that because apparently, some law enforcement agencies are mixing young detainees with older adults. I think there should be no problem about catching children who are aged below 18, as long as they are not mixed in with older adults who may actually be older adults who could influence them to become hardened criminals as they grow up.
A good approach would be to place these younger children in foster homes, but apparently there are not enough foster homes that could absorb them.
For some reason, there is only one Boy’s Town in the whole country, and that is a sad reality because these residences would have been very good alternatives to foster homes.
Since we know that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is probably overloaded with these children and they are also lacking in budgets, it is about time that all local government units (LGUs) should be required to put up their own Boy’s Town.
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Should we have a real food czar?
I know that the Secretary of Agriculture is supposed to be the food czar, but he certainly does not have authority over food importation, except in the case of rice maybe. He also does not have authority over food distribution, a function that apparently belongs to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
To put it in another way, who is ultimately accountable if there are food shortages in the country. If it is neither the Department of Agriculture (DA) nor the DTI, then who is?
I believe that the supply chain of food in this country and in any country for that matter should include not only production, but also distribution and consumption, with importation in between.
Some might say that I am asking too much, but look at what has happened to us. We are importing most of our milk and flour, and we are even importing our beef.
To go straight to my point, I believe that there should be a real food czar that has a staff function that reports directly to the President. He or she should have cabinet rank, and he or she should have collegial relationships with the secretaries of the DA and the DTI, these two having a line function.
In a manner of speaking, the Executive Secretary is the de facto Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Executive Branch, and he reports directly to the President, who is in effect the de facto Chief Executive Officer (CEO). In that sense, the COO has direct authority over the secretaries of the DA and DTI, when it comes to food security.
While this system could work already, it could be improved if there is a staff function connecting the line functions./PN
