Children of the port

Yesterday, I took a ferry from Lapu Lapu to mainland Cebu and just minutes after we left Mulle Osmeña, the bustling pier across was a site to behold even from afar. The gantries at the international port fed to the brim a larger-than-usual cargo vessel berthing idly amid the sultry breeze of the amihan along the Mactan-Cebu channel.

As we approached Pier 4, the scene became a bit hectic. A twin-hulled fully-air-conditioned capsule vessel just swirled unperturbed towards the south while another RoRo ship was towed to her back by a small boat to reach the side of the concrete harbor.

And from behind the scene are hordes of people probably the welcome parties of arriving passengers. There were shuttles, cars and forklifts and other heavy equipment standing by awaiting the boat's full stop to unload some commercial and personal stuff from her internal depot.

Amid the vibrant active and economically thriving port, what struck my eye was rather a totally different scene - a scene of desperation and destitution. I saw people who braved the deep to catch loose change from throwing passengers who are probably thrilled or perhaps fascinated by the survival instincts of these nomads of the sea.

What's worse is that, I also saw children joining the diving frenzy some of them as young as 4 or 5 years old!

I was told that they are among our indigenous brethren or the " Badjaos" who have come to scrounge the waters than fish for a living. Some humored that these coin divers must have developed some kind of gills part of the modern human evolution that's taking place among the deprived.

But I say they are social orphans resulting from state neglect and ethnic discrimination.

Orphans because the government supposedly acting as parens patriae, literally parent of the country, had turned a dead ear of their sorry and solitary state a long time ago. Come to think of the irony here when one of the country's most profitable port authorities hasn't even come up with a single humanitarian program to these, as they call it, "eyesores" of their very own waterfronts!

As our boat reached Pier 3, I hurried out first to catch a cab and avoid the scorching heat. But something caught my attention as I parsed the ruckus happening at the neighboring pier.

It was a young stevedore maybe around 12 or 13 years old who slipped the boat's wooden gangplank luckily avoiding the barnacled beams of the pier as he plunged down to the grimy waters.

The stevedores then were seemingly entertained of the faux pas of that young boy. But it's definitely not amusing to see children exposed to the dangers and hard labor that they must go through especially port-related jobs.

The worst thing an adult can do to a child is to deprive him of his childhood. Children need to explore their creativity, study and play just like the other children you see in the park not in the ports.

Paging Cebu Port Authority

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