Middle of this week we had the opportunity to host a friend who recently went to China ton an observation/educational tour. All that he told us were actually debunking claims from some Filipinos who have paranoia on China and its government.
According to this friend of ours he was able to have guided tours in several manufacturing plants, heavy industries, agricultural communities, and even power production and distribution facilities. One plant that he and some companions visited was a large solar power plant. The expanse of the installed solar panels was so large an area.
Normally what is covered by the solar panels becomes totally useless for agricultural production. However, according to our friend, it was a totally different situation in that solar power plant. The areas covered by the panel installation, according to our friend, was still growing rice. He said that modern technology developed by the Chinese themselves makes the ground under still viable for growing rice. And even as the Chinese admitted that rice, when planted under a shaded area, will either not bear grains, technology makes it possible.
According to this friend of ours, his group was told by the Chinese who serve as their guide, gadgets were installed all over the shaded area and water is diverted from the irrigation canal up to where the solar power panels are installed. Primarily using ultra violet rays, the sunlight is being replicated. As consequence the heat of the sun is transformed into what is needed to grow the rice plant.
Thus, our friend told us, with the Chinese using their discovered technology, they are certain that there is always a way not to alter the agricultural productivity of the farm land encompassed by the solar panel installation.
And this friend of ours talked about his observation of a Waste-to-Energy plant where the surrounding was littered with some kind of warehouses that serve as depository of collected garbage before this is fed to the incinerating machines.
According to him his group was taken to very spacious and sanitary room where all the functions of the different components of the plant are monitored on real time. He added that while hundreds of thousands of tons of garbage are hauled inside the plant compound not a single member of his group, much less himself, smelt any undesirable odor.
In other words, he said, the plants they were toured are clearly carbo-neutral
Then he told us of their visit to a car manufacturing and assembly plant where work is shared by persons and robots. The plant they visited is producing mostly electric-driven vehicles that are now commonly used in that country.
His experiences in that country was his travel on board a bullet train. A distance like from Davao City to Cagayan de Oro that requires around 9 hours to travel on board a private vehicle via Butuan City, was negotiated by the bullet train in only two hours.
Vehicular traffic? Well, according to this friend of ours they stayed in a big and industrialized city in Southern China but for the two weeks that he was there, it seems to him that traffic is alien in that metropolis.
Us going to China to validate what we were told? Well, we can only dream. After all, to dream is free.
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We wonder if there is anyone among candidates for Councilors in the second and third districts will ever be able to reach very secluded areas visited by some of the more famous charity vloggers.
We are raising this question because if none of them, especially those who would be lucky enough to win in the coming polls, are able to visit he areas concerned, they will never be able to come up with local legislation that will help alleviate the lives of the residents thereat.
Say, there are people, mostly lumads, who live in sitios accessible only by trail and negotiated by walking for hours. The nearest school for children to study is as far as three hours of walking. In Paquibato district where many sitios are so distant, the available hospital and medical practitioners – a doctor and a few nurses – are stationed in Paquibato Proper.
We have also personally gone to the sitios in that district as well as those in Marilog areas during the time when we were active in media and we were covering some bloody incidents at the height of the New People’s Army (NPA) operation. So for a time we were witness to the isolation of those places and the desperate condition of people residing in those remote areas.
Hence, it is our take that until the council aspirants are able to personally see the conditions of the places and people thereat, only then will they be able to introduce measures in the City Council that can effectively address the most basic of needs of both the places and the residents.
But will our candidates ever go there and see the situation for themselves. Unlikely.
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