Let's stop wasting our precious resources!

Dubai: I’m back in Dubai for a conference and how the weather has changed. I was here last September when the heat was at an unbearable 46 degrees. You had to run from your bus or car just to enter your hotel. This time, the weather is a very comfy 25 degrees and you could walk outside even under the heat of the sun at noon and there’s little heat to bother you. Just near our hotel is Dubai’s spanking Metro Rail inaugurated when we were here last Sept. 9, 2009. They marked that date as 9-9-9 so that the people would remember when the Metro started running.

Looking at the Dubai Metro made me think about the controversy hounding the Light Rail Transit (LRT) project that the AMA Holdings Group is pushing so hard. Officials of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) are asking Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña to give his approval, because anyway this project won’t cost the City of Cebu a single peso. Last week, Mayor Tomas Osmeña came up with a one-page ad in the local dailies entitled “BRT vs. LRT: Do you want this to happen to Cebu City?” We’re not as rich as Dubai to subsidize a project like this!

Mayor Osmeña did his homework very well especially when he pointed out “The MRT3 is not commercially viable at current fare levels which levels is the lowest among the different transport modes on EDSA, and low relative to the other mass transit systems in other developing countries. With annual revenues of P2.1B and annual expenses of P8.9B over the next 20 years, the average subsidy required for the next 20 years is P6.8B per year. At a 15% discount rate, we estimate the present value of MRT 3’s funding gap at P43.9B. To eliminate government subsidies, fares would have to be increased from an average of P12.50 to P60.53.”

This is a very good point to consider because we Cebuanos care about what happens to the whole country! Like it or not, we are considered a 3rd world country, yet we have a knack of wasting scarce resources, all because of misguided Pinoy pride! The late Sir Max Soliven used to say, “Sanamagan, we are a poor country pretending to be rich!”

We have seen this happen over and over again and guess who gets away with it? The so-called “carpetbaggers” or the middleman who stand to gain millions for their participation in every transaction with the government. This is not to mention the politicians get their “cut!” A case in point was, the infamous Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) in Morong, Bataan. The opposition then was shouting that this deal with Westinghouse was rotten and the Marcoses made a lot of money in this highly overpriced deal.

When the Filipino people won the EDSA Revolt and installed Tita Cory in a tumultuous victory of the opposition, one of the first things she did was scrap the BNPP! In so doing, she mothballed the power plant. Not only that, the Filipino engineers who were sent abroad in order to train themselves in running a nuclear facility ended up jobless. But since there are many nuclear plants being run in Western countries, these Filipino nuclear engineers easily found jobs outside the country.

As for the BNPP, I don’t recall any case filed by the Cory government against this alleged corrupt deal. But thanks to Pinoy pride, we taxpayers paid for the mothballed plant up to three years ago. Surely, the crooks got away with their corruption, while the middlemen or carpetbaggers made their cut and the Philippine government ended up paying for something we did not want to use and Metro Manila was plunged into darkness during the time of Tita Cory. Clearly she got the wrong advice on this case. Look, 23 years later, we still have a serious power shortage, something that would have been alleviated if we allowed the BNPP to be operated. It’s too late now.

Meanwhile back to the LRT issue. I have said this many times already that we should drop the “L” and keep this project going if only the promoter AMA Group was receptive to Cebuano ideas instead of ramming LRT down our throats. We need a rail system akin to the old Cebu Railway that used to run from Danao all the way to Carcar. That railway was bombed by the Americas during World War II and the railway property sold mostly to the Aznar family. I know this because when we opened the M.J. Cuenco Ave. link from the corner of Imus to link up to P. del Rosario St. the government had to pay the Aznar family for the land.

I dare say that it is about time that our political leadership look for sustainable projects with profit potentials that can have a clear payback period. My own readings about mass transit systems is, all of them are losing propositions, which end up being subsidized by the government. Let’s nail it to the heads of our political leaders that we are still a poor country and we just can’t waste precious resources on high-financed projects like an LRT.

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