By ALDWIN QUITASOL
www.nordis.net

Maybe a person’s time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food. — Frank A. Clark

The city of Pines is once again busy not only because of the activities of the 2012 Panagbenga Flower Festival. Every year, streets of the city are closed for market encounters where traders from different places display their wares.

For the traders, it will be purposely for them to sell and have good profit, for the organizers of the festival, these traders will pay them rent and a percentage in revenues.

When the main road of the city will be closed for a week as it will bloom with busineses of those who can afford to rent booths along both lanes of the mainstreet, Session road. Employees hired to set up and decorate their booths, selling and packing up will once again be challenged to sell as much as they can to make it profitable. But their daily pay or wage will remain the same no matter how much their bosses will gain from the week’s fair.

In the restaurants, hotels and inns and other establishments, tourists whether foreigners or local will flood in. Thus making the employees busy and most of the time work overtime. It is good if their employers are humane enough to give them compensation aside from their rightful overtime pay.

In this season of the year, some may be employed by companies seeking for promotions. They will hire students and unemployed graduates desperately looking for money. It will create jobs, it’s true, but temporary.

When the main streets will be closed from traffic, the drivers especially from the taxi cab groups will suffer heavily. As one of them said, “sus, makurangan manen ti ruta mi, narigat manen ti biyahe, marigatan kami manen iti boundary,” (sigh, our routes again will be shortened, it will be difficult trips, it will be difficult again to eck out the boundary). Some of them will be forced to barn their vehicles and stay home or look for other sources of income until Panagbenga ends.

At the end of the celebrations, street sweepers and garbage collectors will be the busiest people of the city as they will have to face the monstrous garbage.

Festivals artificially made for tourism and of course profit does not burden the business owners, the capitalists or the politicians, the workers are there to suffer the heavy labor and receive the very low pay.# nordis.net