EDITORIAL - Before motorbikes, kids walked to school

Oh my God! Or as the young would put it, OMG! This is the only thing that comes to mind at how Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña is taking the implementation of the law banning small children from being transported on motorcycles. If anything can be so illogical, this is it. To Osmeña, banning children from being transported on motorcycles is a hindrance to education. OMG!

While Osmeña said Cebu City will enforce RA 10666 or the Children’s Safety on Motorcycles Act of 2015 (as if he really had any choice), he will ask traffic enforcers to be a little considerate when motorcycle drivers are transporting children to school. What he is not saying is whether he will assume any responsibility when any accidents happen as a result thereof.

There is really something out of whack in the notion that banning the transport of children on motorcycles is a hindrance to education. Osmeña apparently forgets that long before there were any motorcycles, children have already been going to school. He apparently is unaware that schoolchildren who did not have cars and could not afford public transportation had to walk, sometimes for kilometers, just to go to school.

This is not to say that society has to go back to the olden days when people pretty much had to do a lot of walking. This is simply to show that the ban on the transport of children on motorcycles is not the end of education for them. On the contrary, it is one of the better laws crafted with the interest of children in mind. Unfortunately, better laws do not stand a chance in this country because of faulty or lackluster implementation.

Instead of criticizing the law over some out-of-whack and untenable notion, Osmeña should have started thinking of ways to help those who will be affected by the law’s implementation. If he is so worried about people in the remote areas who depend so much on motorcycles for their means of transport, maybe he can provide them with four-wheeled vehicles.

In areas where it might be impossible for four-wheeled vehicles to operate, he can always give bags of cement to the barangays and ask the people there to build concrete pathways so that if schoolchildren have no other option but to walk, at least they will walk with a little ease. And he can give the children umbrellas to shield them from the sun and rain. Walking is good for children, except, of course, for those who never had to walk in their lives.