Friday, May 22, 2009

Fun Friday - Dumb laws in the Philippines

For this week’s Fun Friday, the topic is dumb laws where you live. I think it's good that I can not think of any dumb laws in the Philippines straight away aside from laws changing the street names or establishments after the name of the President’s father or any other political figure, hehehe. Well, some of the laws are good but the implementation is the problem.

I tried to search the internet for dumb laws in the Philippines and the only information that I got was from dumblaws.com. They pointed out MMDA’s unified number-coding system as a dumb law wherein vehicles whose license plates end with a 1 or 2 are not allowed on the roads on Monday, 3 or 4 on Tuesday, 5 or 6 on Wednesday, 7 or 8 on Thursday, and 9 or 0 on Friday from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.

I don’t think that this is a dumb law, at all. The idea here is to reduce the volume of traffic on the streets by 20 percent everyday. And it was effective to some extent. However, car owners are on the losing end. Imagine not being able to drive your car one day every week? Well, I don’t have a car so it is not a big deal for me, lol. On the bright side, car owners will get to save on fuel during those days that they will not be able to drive their cars.

There is another law in the Philippines, that some considered stupid. It is one of the provisions of the Urban Development and Housing Act where squatters or trespassers who disregard property rights cannot be evicted and their illegal structures cannot be demolished without finding a relocation site for them or paying them first. How stupid is that??

Can you think of any other dumb laws in the Philippines or where you live?

6 comments:

femmepower said...

hi leo! this is also the reason why i haven't posted anything.i did the same thing as u did and only found the number coding.and like u,i don't think it's dumb.for people who aren't acquainted about our traffic situation here in manila,they could view it as dumb.u should have seen my hubby's reaction on this.irate,he said "who says it's a dumb law?" hehe affected.

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melissa said...

You are lucky then, to not be riddled with silly, and dumb laws. I think the squatter one is pretty dumb, and violates the property owners rights.

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betchai said...

i agree, i do not think the number coding is dumb at all, considering the traffic we have in the philippines especially in the metro manila area. i remember it was not at all a problem for some of my family who live in the metro, the kids carpool to school.

yeah, the squatter law is hard, i pity sometimes the land owners who can not use their land at all.



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Badong said...

i think the law-makers are the dumb ones. hehe

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Vera said...

Although it does sound pretty dumb to enable squatters by finding them a relocation site before tearing their homes down but what it does is actually recognize that they have human rights too. What is wrong is allowing them setup homes already and let them stay there for years before property owners decide to act on the situation. If they guarded their properties well in the first place, the so called squatters won't have been able to build their lives there.

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Arlyna said...

Allo Leomar,

First time commenting on your blog. Regarding "dumb laws", Here in Montreal, Canada - we have some pretty dumb laws too. It was shown in our local news here - i thought it was pretty pathetic. A man was feeding a squirrel in a park of a particular borough. He was fined and if he didn't pay up he would have been arrested. Pretty sad.

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