We have said it again and thought reiterating it makes us a broken record. But breaking record, we will.
Because of this injustice, our leaders have just mocked the poor among us whose only chance of decent protein is getting fish in its meal.
Of course, they are doing something. They have asked the BFAR to get us fishports. And refrigerated vans. And fish cages. And lambaklad. And God knows what else.
Notwithstanding the friendliness of Bohol local papers to the local leaders, 75%, and that’s three of the four English local tabloids picked on the hopelessness people and thus the papers see on the effort to bring down the price of the modest galunggong.
You see, it’s no rocket science because everyone can see that over half, or some 30 of 48 Bohol towns are coastal municipalities.
And as much as we are made to believe that Bohol seas are overfished by a few notches, it is still a fact that were sitting on a migration freeway highway for tuna, tulingan and numerous other pelagic fish, we also have a seed bank for fish at the northeastern Danajon Bank.
In short, without fear of contradiction, we can aver that Bohol sits on a fish bank.
And everyone knows that by saying these waters are overfished, they are actually saying there is an oversupply of fish being caught.
Elementary economics slam us right in the face. When there’s too much supply, there’s got to be less demand, thus price would go down.
No. Not here.
They said, fishermen are selling their catch in bulk in Cebu and nearby provinces. By that, they have to bleed in fuel and gun their engines two full hours at top speed to rush the fish to Cebu? Do we even know how much that would be costing them?
Forget it, the last guys who would risk it to Cebu and selling it like the price they are selling in Cebu, it’s no brainer to say that fish businessmen doing this got utok bolinaw.
It’s a cartel, stupid, it’s a cartel is staring us right in the face.
And our leaders point us to an opposite direction.
If this is not disservice, then maybe this has become of our politicians. Utok bolinao.
It’s not that Boholanos are asking the leaders to make malasugue, grouper or the snappers cheap.
It’s as simple as bringing the lowly man’s galunggong, borot-borot and tulingan down so as the daily wage-deprived construction worker can pump on something decent enough to call as food.
If they can’t get it done by hooking into the cartel, then maybe we can look for somebody who will? Then we’d have broken a record.
