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THE
official line is that “it’s still under study,” but the
earlier people put their opposition on record, the
better.
We refer
to that harebrained idea to register all mobile phones
in a country dubbed the “texting capital of the world,”
where an estimated 44 million subscribers have made
telcos as rich as they are, but who, unfortunately, have
not gotten the police protection they deserve from
thieves—and even murderers, considering how so many have
died fending off robbers.
The
“draft study,” we are told, is still being circulated
among the commissioners of the National
Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and was done by one
of the NTC engineers.
Under
the proposed “electronic registration system,”
mobile-phone owners will have to register each unit
and—this is the disgusting part—pay P150 per. The system
was trotted out as some sort of a replacement for an
earlier idea, shot down by consumers and the telcos, to
put stickers on each unit, for a fee of P75 each,
supposedly as a measure to check the unbridled
cell-phone theft in this country.
Both
ideas, the sticker and the electronic-registration
system, are flawed from the start by sheer illogic. We
have here a police problem, i.e., the failure of
authorities to dent the activities of numerous
cell-phone robbery syndicates that have long been the
bane of both ordinary and rich people for the longest
time.
In some
cases, according to reliable information reaching the
media, cell-phone theft has become a “police problem” in
a literal sense because crooked cops are coddling the
thieves. And why are cell-phone robbery gangs so crucial
to crooked cops and all other organized crimes? Because
they provide the steady supply for disposable phones so
crucial to the “operations” of these hoodlums—be they
into illegal drugs, car jacking, human trafficking or
large-scale estafa.
A
heartbreaking example of a cell-phone theft victim, the
brilliant and hardworking business journalist and poet
Jose Luis “Joselu” Villanueva was mercilessly killed
nearly three years ago in Pasay City by cell-phone
thieves preying on buses plying Edsa. Despite their
relatively better economic standing compared to the
countless other ordinary people who lost their phones,
or even their lives, to these thieves, until now no
justice has come to the family of Joselu. By his
victimization, he thus showed that in life, as in death,
the cell phone has become this century’s greatest
equalizer.
Yet,
now, here comes the government throwing in people’s
faces a “solution” to a police problem that will not
really guarantee them protection but will even hurt
their already thin wallets.
The
police can’t or won’t stop cell-phone thieves? Maybe
because some crooked cops are coddling them and their
related organized-crime “sister businesses.”
Solution? Dun the hapless cell-phone owner. If this
proposal were ever floated in India, with its 100
million subscribers, or
China,
with 458 million, it would spark a revolution.
In the
Philippines alone, the numbers are mind-boggling:
multiply 44 million cell-phone subscribers (divided
between the Globe, Smart and Sun Cellular networks) by
P150 per and the government reaps P6.6 billion. Even if
only 10 percent is persuaded to register, that’s P660
million, a huge sum that the government is rewarding
itself for its failure to protect the people from
criminals, while punishing the very victims seeking
protection by compelling them to sign up and pay up.
Onli in da Pilipins!
In the
past two years, we’ve seen several bureaucratic means to
stem the tide of cell-phone thefts, such as requiring
vendors’ stalls, especially in commercial zones selling
lots of secondhand phones, to be registered.
The NTC
also has its own kilometric list of things to do to have
your phone’s sale number and SIM blocked once it’s
stolen. But apparently, the red tape has discouraged
many from this option, not to mention when they read
about how “technical geniuses” have been able to unlock
phones just like that.
None of
these measures, however, is as ridiculous as the P150
registration system. It is a cruel imposition because,
as everyone knows, the cell phone has become an utter
necessity, not a luxury, in this country.
In the
past few years, so many ordinary people in various
sectors scattered across thousands of islands have found
use for it for their business and their daily routines,
while millions of families have stayed connected to OFWs
around the globe through texting. And this is precisely
what impelled the giant telcos to invest in such
internationally acclaimed—and lucrative—technologies
that speeded up even financial transactions, such as
remitting back home those precious OFW earnings, through
the mobile phone.
In
China, the ratio of mobile-phone subscribers to the
total population is roughly 35 percent; in India, 9
percent; but in the Philippines, it’s 55 percent. The
cell phone is the only thing in modern times that has
truly put everyone, rich or poor, illiterate or Ivy
League-educated, on a par. The Filipino maid in a villa
in Saudi Arabia is no different from the CEO in Makati
City when it comes to communicating: their common means
of choice is a cell phone.
It is,
thus, no surprise that many Filipinos have died fending
off cell-phone robbers. And yet, day after day, the
stats haunt us with alarming regularity. Walk or cruise
through the metropolis’s vaunted tourist places and
cringe at the ubiquitous warnings: “Please guard against
cell-phone snatchers.”
What
crazy logic: the burden is always on the victims. They
must be vigilant; they must submit to government’s
harebrained ideas, or shell out precious money to
fulfill them.
Meanwhile, the robbers have a field day and the
police—aw, forget it. |
