For our special presentation on our talkshow Straight from the Sky, we usually bring you a discussion on the Sinulog Festival. But with the millions of people that have come to Cebu to celebrate the Sinulog Week, we deviate from our traditional Sinulog show and give our televiewers an insight on what makes Cebu tick. Yes, many people from outside Cebu are wondering why Cebu continues to grow despite all the present challenges that we are facing, like zero infrastructures under the Aquino Regime in the past three years.
So tonight to give you an idea of what makes Cebu tick, we have with us former Cebu Investment Promotion Center Managing Director Mr. Joel Mari Yu whose lifelong work helped in bringing into our shores those foreign direct investments that you can touch and see in IT Park, where today more than a hundred thou-sand Cebuanos are working with good salaries. Because of the success of the IT industry, it has spawned an indirect industry servicing those Business Process Outsourcing companies and it has literally changed the landscape of Cebu City. So watch this very interesting show on Cebu and what makes it tick with Mr. Joel Mari Yu on SkyCable's channel 61 at 8 p.m. with replays on MyTV channel 30 at 9 p.m. M-W-F.
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Last Friday, we wrote that article, "Time to change that "Pwede Na" Pinoy Standard" and it has caused a stir from friends who texted me that I really hit the nail on the head. Actually, I'm writing this piece inside my hotel room in Cagayan de Oro as I was invited to speak at the two-day Philippines For Life National Leaders Consultative Meeting 2014 at the VIP Hotel together with former Manila Mayor and now Buhay Partylist Congressman Lito Atienza. So last Friday, I flew for the first time to the one-year-old Laguindingan Airport and it only validated what I wrote that if we do not get rid of our "Pwede Na" or "Okay Na" mentality, this nation can never progress and good examples can be found in CDO.
Let's start with the airport in CDO. The last time I flew to CDO was two days after Typhoon "Sendong" struck CDO in De-cember 2011 where the Cagayan River overflowed in a natural ca-lamity that surprised the people of CDO because that typhoon only brought huge rains to the mountains but not to the city. Yet CDO got the brunt of this disaster. Since that time, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines finally decided to open the still unfinished Laguindigan Airport, which still lacked runway lights and navigational equipment to safely guide airplanes to the runway.
Early Saturday morning, I had to wake up early in order to take the mini-bus to the new airport some 40 kms away only to find out after an hour inside the airport that operations were halted due to bad weather. I discovered to my horror that the La-guindingan Airport Terminal was not a big terminal. Its pre-departure area was so small; they didn't even have space for an X-Ray machine, which is standard in most airports today.
Worse of all, since the navigational equipment wasn't yet in-stalled, the control tower that CAAP used for the Laguindingan Airport is the control tower of the old Lumbia Airport, 45 kms away! Good heavens! Why did CAAP allow this situation to happen?
I told my audience that if an accident were to happen in La-guindingan Airport (simbako!) the controllers at the Lumbia Con-trol Tower would have no idea of the accident and therefore, they cannot call and dispatch emergency fire and rescue vehicles to help the stricken plane. These are life and death situations where time is of the essence. If the tower cannot report an accident then it is a bad situation turned into a disaster.
To aggravate matters for Cagayanons, the 40-kilometer trip from CDO to Laguindingan is still in the various stages of widening and for this project, it has taken the DPWH more than two years already and the construction is still ongoing. So we ask; why did CAAP prematurely open the Laguindingan Airport? The only answer I can find is that, Pres. Benigno "PNoy" Aquino, III wanted to show that he was inaugurating infrastructure projects here and there, although people here know that this airport was constructed during the time of PNoy's predecessor, Pres. GMA.
But by moving airport operations from Lumbia Airport to Laguindingan Airport, CAAP has literally shortchanged the people of CDO because there are no more flights from 5 p.m. because the airport has no runway lights and other navigational aids. This situation has already been happening for a year already and because the people of Cagayan de Oro have embraced that ugly Pinoy culture of "Pwede Na" or "Okay Na" they suffer quietly. This is the challenge we are throwing to our readers, should we continue with our tolerance? Should we still embrace our "Pwede Na, Ok Na" attitude? I dare say that it is time to change and that change has to happen yesterday!
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Email: vsbobita@gmail.com