VM asks board to stop rise in street dwellers

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu City acting mayor Edgardo Labella is urging the Anti-Mendicancy Board to stop the "proliferation" of street dwellers in the city.

"It seems that there is a proliferation. Ang atong mga kadalanan, particu-larly in the areas in Fuente Osmeña, Mango Avenue, Osmeña Boulevard and even in our skywalks," he said yesterday.

Labella said he uses to roam around the city around 5 a.m. before he proceeds to the Cebu City Sports Center for a jogging session and observes a number of street dwellers along the way, particularly on skywalks where these dwellers sleep.

He asked the Anti-Mendicancy Board to check the skywalk near Fuente Osmeña Circle and make sure that this will not be converted by street dwellers into a shanty.

Labella said this has a bad effect for the city since some of the street dwellers particularly the younger ones make the city a breeding ground for illegal activities.

The reason behind the alleged increase in the number of street dwellers in the city is the lack of operations against them, that's why he wants to reconvene the Anti-Mendicancy Board.

Labella claimed that during the previous administration, the problem was addressed properly since there were regular operations conducted against street dwellers.

In a phone interview with Councilor Margarita Osmeña, the deputy mayor for social services said she is happy that Labella "finally noticed the situation."

"I'm really happy that he sees it finally," she told The FREEMAN.

In a meeting with the Department of Social Welfare Development, Osmeña said officials of the agency told her that the previous administration underutilized the allotted budget for street children amounting to P 2.8 million.

Of the given budget, only P800,000 was used for the profiling of the street children.

With this, Osmeña vowed to utilize the remaining budget, including the second tranche given by the DSWD amounting to P1.4 million.

Sought for comment on the reconvening of the Anti-Mendicancy Board, Osmeña said:" If he likes, we can reconvene but you know, we had a continuous operation for street dwellers, the Operation Gugma together with NGOs (non-government organizations) and DSWS (Department of Social Welfare and Services)."

She said that under Operation Gugma, they had a periodic rescue operation against the city's street dwellers.

Earlier, Mayor Tomas Osmeña has said to shut down all special bodies at City Hall if they cannot justify their existence.

He said several of these bodies have no minutes of their meetings and no resolutions passed but are expending so much. (FREEMAN)