Let’s start with a prayer for healing and breakthrough: “Father, I ask You for a fresh vision for what breakthrough will look like in my life. Help me pursue healing while I wait for my miracle. Show me how to rest right in the middle of the storm. Help me to enjoy the feast You prepare for me, right in the middle of the battlefield. I want my whole life to testify that there’s a God in heaven who knows my name and who will get me safely home. Fill me afresh with the wonder of Your love and power. I am determined to win this battle with anxiety. Help me discern when to rest, when to feast, and how to actively engage my faith as I wait for You to breakthrough. May my life display Your power. Do the impossible in and through me, I pray. Amen.” (Susie Larson)
It’s about time that our honorable leaders put money (people’s money, that is) where their mouths are by actually giving our long-suffering nurses a raise. Enough of useless lip service. Our honorable leaders must walk their talk. Our overworked and underpaid nurses deserve a raise a long time ago. No wonder many of our best and brightest nurses and other health workers have opted and are still opting to leave this benighted land and work abroad to achieve a better life for themselves and their families.
Since it’s hopefully better to be late than never, this near-sighted Ibaloy writer is elated and titillated to learn that a Supreme Court decision to finally increase the minimum salary of government nurses 18 years after a law providing such increase was enacted will finally be implemented. Justice truly crawls ever so slowly in our beautiful archipelago of delicious coconuts and smiling carabaos.
On July 17, the Department of Budget and Management has issued a circular, raising the minimum monthly base pay of entry-level nurses that is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2020. Again, this is good news no matter how very late in the day it is. Nurses and other health workers deserve much more, of course, especially now that they are the frontliners in this fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Sadly, dozens of heroic health workers have already made the ultimate sacrifice in fighting the virus.
FYI: In view of the increasing incidence of Covid-19 infection in Baguio, Mayor Benjie Magalong encourages people with flu-like symptoms to immediately inform their barangay officials so they can be tested for Covid-19 as soon as possible.
This is to immediately identify those who are infected to mitigate the spread of the virus.
Likewise, the mayor reiterates his earlier advisory:
“Our residents are reminded to limit their presence outside their homes for essential tasks only. It is, after all, a quarantine rule.
We have been having a sharp increase in cases in our locale so, if you don’t have anything important to do, stay home. Let’s not put our guards down.
Treat yourselves like you have it. Treat others like they have it. Make it a habit. Survive,” he said.
Here’s “On the Ning Nang Nong” by Spike Milligan: “On the Ning Nang Nong/ Where the Cows go Bong!/ and the monkeys all say BOO!/ There’s a Nong Nang Ning/ Where the trees go Ping!/ And the tea pots jibber jabber joo./ On the Nong Ning Nang/ All the mice go Clang/ And you just can’t catch ‘em/ when they do!/ So its Ning Nang Nong/ Cows go Bong!/ Nong Nang Ning/ Trees go ping/ Nong Ning Nang/ The mice go Clang/ What a noisy place to belong/ is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!”
