Our having a water and traffic crisis

During our 888 News Forum at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel yesterday, we had with us Tony Tompar who talked about  why Metro Cebu lacks a water supply. Who else can talk about water issues from the private sector except for the Mactan Rock Industries, Inc. that Tompar and Lito Maderazo have been working on for more than 40 years. Today, Mactan Rock Industries has grown in leaps and bounds, presenting a Filipino way of extracting groundwater or offering a desalination plant. Mactan Rock Industries calls this a “Total Water Management Company”.

With a Cebu based water company like Mactan Rock Industries, Cebu shouldn’t have a water crisis. Unfortunately, our previous political leaders only thought of having more development without realizing that development growth needs more people to work on and more people means we would need water for their use. Unfortunately, no one cared to give Cebuanos the water that they needed.

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Finally, we heard that Mayor Edgardo Labella has pushed for the creation of the Cebu City College despite the fact that the city needs it ages ago. I can only say that politicians owning schools didn’t want the city to have a college in order for them to have people enroll in their colleges. This is a fact that has happened and continues to happen. In fairness to the Gullas family who has been running the City of Talisay, they already established their own city college way back in the year 2004, proof that not all politicians who run schools are as greedy as what we have. In the year 2005, the City of Mandaue also established its own city college.

From what we learned in the news, Talisay City chose a highly employable college courses along the hospitality industry (Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management), in industrial technology (BS Industrial Technology) and education (BS Elementary Education, etc.), while the Mandaue City College has bachelor’s degrees in political science, English, education, social work, public administration, business administration, tourism management, industrial technology, information technology, electronics, which is quite a complete college education.

For Cebu City, Mayor Labella wants Cebu City College’s (CCC) programs to fit the needs of the city for sustainable development which must generate local technocrats who will be trained to address the problems that continue to plague the city with garbage, flooding and water systems that do not often work. Mayor Labella also wants the college to handle traffic management and many other issues that the city needs.

The proposed Cebu City College would offer a four-year program on solid waste management, flood control, traffic systems, environmental management, water systems, nutrition science, hospital administration and nursing. It will have certificate courses in caregiving, welding, hotel and service industry, sustainable farming and robotics. All these sounds nice except that the plan to use the Ramos Public Market to establish this City College is totally wrong! In my book we can always build it in an area up in the mountain barangays. Please Mayor Labella, build a city college somewhere, but please don’t put them at the Ramos Public Market.

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The Provincial Board (PB) declared a traffic crisis, something that most Cebuanos going in or out of Metro Cebu either from south or north are experiencing daily. We learned that a study conducted by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) showed that daily losses attributed to traffic in Metro Cebu has reached an estimated P1.1 billion, but this is a yearly figure, which is still huge. Thanks to the previous presidents, they never gave enough funds for Cebu Province to widen its national roads. Last Saturday, as I arrived from Davao City, traffic was heavy that it took me two hours to arrive home from the airport.

To help solve our traffic crisis, Governor Garcia said she had asked the Department of Public Works and Highways-7 to present its proposed traffic management solutions in the next Metro Cebu Development and Coordinating Board (MCDCB) meeting. At this point, I’m sad that even up to today, my proposal way back when I was CITOM chief to have a parallel road to Escario St. has yet to be implemented by the DPWH. So in the meantime, we Cebuanos just have to suffer through the incompetence of our DPWH officials.

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