EDITORIAL - The ghosts of streetlamps past

Just because a Japanese company donated to Cebu City two solar-powered, wind turbine streetlamps, each valued at P350,000, doesn't mean City Hall should go berserk and heed the recommendation of the Department of Public Services to buy 40 more. Buying streetlamps at P350,000 each is a harebrained idea, no matter how much you couch it in environmental and energy-saving mumbo-jumbo.

In case everyone has forgotten, the entire country was stunned silly when it was discovered that 1,800 decorative streetlamps installed along the ceremonial route of delegates to the 2007 ASEAN Summit in Cebu were purchased at an obscene P224,000 each when, according to most estimates, each would not cost more than P85,000.

And now the DPS is suggesting the purchase of 40 streetlamps at P350,000 each? What kind of a dimwitted idea is that? Okay, so maybe the streetlamps do cost that much because, as they are described, they are solar-powered and are equipped with a wind turbine. It is accepted that clean energy, at its missionary stage, is indeed expensive.

But nobody is questioning the cost as it is but the cost-effectiveness of the suggested purchase. If the streetlamp happened to be a device meant to power and illuminate an entire building, even a modest one such as a barangay hall, then maybe the purchase will be wise. But a streetlamp? What illumination does mankind need to justify the purchase of a streetlamp worth P350,000?

Let us not lose our equilibrium over such nice-sounding terminologies as solar power and wind turbine because the fact of the matter is, whatever savings in energy may be derived from the purchase of 40 streetlamps will never be worth the huge amount of money needed to buy them. And whatever contribution to the environment 40 streetlamps may generate in clean energy will be too puny and insignificant to matter a hoot.

The way it appears now, the donation of two solar-powered wind turbine streetlamps could have been nothing more than a bait intended for suckers. A donation of two streetlamps serves no purpose, unless it was meant to lure a more substantial buy. A true and meaningful donation, one that comes with a real desire to help, would have been to give enough streetlamps to light an entire park, or an entire avenue. But two lamps? They were not donations, they were samples, and somebody took a bite.