DAVAO City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio in a radio interview the other day admitted that her “mental health is not okay” at this point in time.
But she also said that despite the prodding by some of her friends for her to seek professional advice she said she refused because she feels uncomfortable sharing her feelings to people she is not well-acquainted with.
And who would not be having problems with one’s “mental health” these days when the health pandemic is bringing almost everybody, even including the well-off, to nuts with the disruption of personal, social and economic activities.
How much for the City Mayor of Davao whose more than 1.5 million constituents are agonizing with the impact of the pandemic brought about by the deadly unseen Coronavirus? Imagine the mayor thinking of whatever ways she can to balance the maintenance of the health of the population and at the same time ensure that they can survive the lack or even absence of livelihood activities!
Yes, with the kind of problems now the city is facing – substantially reduced income, the risk of the city’s health system going overwhelmed should a major surge of the CoViD 19 cases occur, and of course, helping the bulk of the more than half a million constituents survive the pandemic – one’s healthy mind would indeed be much harder to maintain.
The stress brought about by the problems can be devastating to any leader if he or she indeed is sincerely concerned for the welfare and well-being of his or her people.
We can only laud the lady mayor for her honesty and boldness in admitting that the stress brought about by the existing situation is affecting her mental health.
Our responsibility is to pray for the mayor to be able to withstand the stress and make good in all the endeavors she is doing to see the city through in this monster of a problem that has been engulfing the world for over a year already.
And if we have to think of the mayor’s stress level given the limited area of her concern, then we would only imagine how many times over is the stress level of her father who is president of the Philippines! Especially so that there are a number of people wishing him ill-will hoping that they would be given the chance to be at the upper echelon of leadership of the country soon.
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We are happy to note that as of Tuesday, April 27, 2021 the local risk assessment team of Davao City’s CoViD 19 situation has not found any single barangay in the city that can be considered a critical area or even in the high risk category.
In other words, the present strategies adopted by the city government and health authorities are working and appear to be holding its grounds. This is one development that is most welcome and people in the city can even expect more improvement of the situation if the mayor’s plan to request the national Task Force on CoViD 19 response will grant her request that the Local Governments and its leaders in the Davao Region be granted authority to impose semi-closed borders in their areas of jurisdiction.
Clearly, this is one move that will obviate the possibility of a surge of CoViD cases in any of the LGUs in the region because only essential travels to and from the areas would be allowed. We can only hope that the national IATF will see the lady mayor’s wisdom in making such a request.
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Now comes this another problem for the financially-deprived drivers of public utility vehicles as well as those working as drivers of factories and other transport establishments.
We are referring to a law, (Or is it only a policy adopted by certain agencies of government?) to augment their income now that it is dwindling because of the CoViD 19 pandemic? That is, for all drivers who will be renewing their license after its 5-year life span expires to take a seminar for two days.
For the record we are not against the scheme. But we can only suspect that this is another layer of bureaucracy that will further delay transactions in government offices one of which is the Land Transportation Office (LTO) contrary to what President Rodrigo Duterte wants.
And worst, when a question was raised whether the renewal applicants will have to pay for the seminar, it was clear that they have although there is reportedly a plan to defer the collection of fees considering the present economic condition of the people.
Now that is the crux of the matter.
