PHILIPPINS MISSES BOAT ON WATER CAR INVENTION DUE TO GOVERNMENT’S INDIFFERENCE — PIMENTEL

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Nene” Q. Pimentel,
Jr. (PDP-Laban) today deplored the lackadaisical
attitude of government bureaucrats towards scientific
inventions made by Filipino inventors which has
deprived the country of tremendous benefits from their
pioneering works.

Pimentel said the Philippines could have taken the
lead in the production of water-powered cars and the
harnessing of ocean waves to generate power – which
are now a reality in other countries – if the
government authorities paid due attention to the local
inventors who first discovered the technologies for
these alternatives to expensive oil as early as the
1980s.

Assailing what appears to be the government’s
wishy-washy attitude towards science and technology as
a concrete means to propel the country into the
developed and industrialized world, the minority
leader batted for the allocation of P200 million
additional funds for the research and development
projects of the Department of Science and Technology
(DOST) and for the training of teachers in physics and
scholarship grants of science education under the 2008
national budget.

“Not only do we fail to provide the DOST with adequate
funds to pursue research and development. Neither are
we outraged by the neglect of our officials to support
our investors so that their creativeness may benefit
the nation,” Pimentel said in a privilege speech in
the Senate.

He recalled that in 1986, an Ilonggo inventor named
Daniel Dingle came over to see him at his office as
interior and local government minister to present the
water-run car that he had invented.

Pimentel said then President Corazon Aquino instructed
then Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) to look
into Dingle’s invention after riding in the water-run
car during a test drive within the premises of
Malacañang.

After several weeks, he said an official of the MOST
replied to him that they found no merit to Dingle’s
invention by claiming that the car ran on a mix of
gasoline and water.

Pimentel said when he asked the inventor about it, the
latter explained that the so-called mix of gasoline
and water was only partially true because he had to
use gasoline to start the engine. The inventor further
said that once the engine gets starter, water would
replace the gasoline to run the car.

“The lackadaisical attitude displayed by the
bureaucrats at the MOST towards the Dingle invention,
I believe, has cost us the billions of pesos that we
are spending and have spent through the years that
kept our vehicles gurgling on gasoline instead of on
water,” he said.