Reviving the Metro Cebu Traffic Authority

With the Lenten Season well underway, I prepared to do interviews for our Lenten Reflection in order to help our viewers come up with a meaningful Lent. So we asked our dear friend, Fr. Ricky Ordoñez (son of Del and Marilou Ordoñez) who is based in Tucson, Arizona to be with me on this Lenten show. Fr. Ricky agreed to do the show with me, but before we started, I checked with my staff when Pope Francis would be having his first year anniversary as Pope… and Lo and behold, that anniversary is coming up on March 13 on Thursday. Since I haven’t done a show about Pope Francis, Fr. Ricky Ordoñez agreed to shift our topic and focus on Pope Francis a year hence.

How time flies indeed that Pope Francis has been our Pope for nearly a year this week and what a year it was. Just before the Consistory chose Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio as the successor of the resigned Pope Benedict XVI, we never ever thought that there would be historic and dramatic changes ever to happen in the Vatican. This is what Fr. Ricky Ordoñez and I will be discussing tonight for our Special Presentation on Straight from the Sky. So watch this interesting insight of Pope Francis on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time slot and replays on MyTV’s channel 30 MWF.

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Last Saturday afternoon, I got a call from Rep. Raul del Mar who commented on the column we wrote about the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA), which should have had a Cebu counterpart called the Metro Cebu Development Authority (MCDA). I wrote that column in response to the article written by our fellow Philippine Star columnist Boo Chanco who wanted the Department of Transportation & Communications (DOTC) to give more powers or authority to the MMDA in the planning and construction of roads and bridges in Metro Manila.

Boo Chanco who believes in us Cebuanos was surprised why we didn’t have an MMDA counterpart. Since he wrote that query in his Facebook, I gave him the reasons why in his Facebook account, which he reprinted in the Star last Feb.28th. So I wrote that column last Saturday in support of Boo Chanco’s call for reforms in the DOTC.

I also pointed out that while Cebu missed out on our version of the MMDA, Rep. Raul del Mar and I did sit down together to map out plans to rewrite Cebu’s version of MMDA and make it the Metro Cebu Traffic Authority (MCTA). My basis for the creation of the MCTA was taken from a unanimous decision by the stakeholders who joined the First Cebu City Transportation Summit, which was later seconded by the First Metro Cebu Transportation Summit in the late 90’s. Cebuanos expected this to happen.

In our telephone conversation, Rep. Raul del Mar assured me that he would re-file the MCTA and all I could say was thank you Raul for Cebu needed this body 15-years ago and it is never too late. If you didn’t know, the MCTA would have put together in one government agency the Land Transportation Office (LTO), the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) and the Traffic Management of the Metro Cebu Cities.

It would be headed by a mayor, with the vice chairman from the private sector since each metro Cebu City would be entitled to have a private sector representative to this traffic body. I envisioned MCTA during my stint as chairman of the Cebu City Traffic Operations & Management (CITOM) because I really felt disgusted that I had to work with traffic enforcers who’ve been working with Cebu City for the past ten to fifteen years and yet, they were still considered casual employees whose terms of employment had to be renewed every three months. They should be permanent.

What frustrates me is that there are probably millions of casual employees all over the country, who depend on their political patrons for a job. These casuals have in so many ways victimized by political persecution especially when the politicians who hired them are not re-elected. This is especially true to the more than 500 CITOM personnel in Cebu City and I’m sure it is the same in Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, and Talisay cities. 

So if MCTA becomes a reality, I would like to believe that this would be the beginning of a more professional traffic enforcement in metro Cebu. So let’s hope and pray that finally, the law that we need to have MCTA become a reality would be adopted and passed into a law.

Finally, Rep. Raul del Mar asked me for some tips on what to ask in the public hearing tomorrow on the bidding controversy hounding the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) new terminal, like no second runway. Like what we already wrote before, we know who are the people behind the winning bidder, the Megawide-GMR consortium, and the second highest bidder Filinvest-Changi Consortium. So let’s wait and see what happens after the Senate hearing tomorrow and in Congress on Wednesday. Abangan!

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