Boracay a cesspool? The entire Philippines is a cesspool

I had a lot of comments on the article we wrote about the Cebu-Bohol Bridge that would decongest Cebu. While this is certainly a mega infrastructure project, if the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials know how to decongest the province of Cebu, it is also by putting a 100-km expressway similar to the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) that brings you to Angeles, Pampanga and to the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport, formerly Clark Air Base. And another 100kms of roadway to the South of Cebu like the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX). Alas, this idea is not even on Cebu’s radar screens!

As of this writing, I still have to read a copy of that Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) document that revealed that the cost of traffic congestion in Metro Manila has reached a whopping P3.5 billion per day. I’m really interested to find out how much is the cost of traffic congestion for Metro Cebu for comparison purposes.

But like what I wrote before, in Australia, where the traffic goes is decided by the traffic authorities who inform their DPWH where to build roads. Alas in this country, it is the mindless, thoughtless officials of DPWH who make that decision for us. They are very good in hiding their corruption within a road construction, but zero in finding ways to ease traffic in a locality. If only DPWH and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) listened to me when I was chairman of the RDC infrastructure committee, my proposal would have saved Cebuanos millions per day.

My good friend, Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Asec Michael Lloyd Dino called me to say that my pet road project – the parallel road to Escario St. – wasn’t calendared for fiscal year 2018 and it can only be traced to the objections of DPWH and NEDA in Region 7! If these people cannot find ways to ease traffic, I dare say that we should cut their salaries. After all, they make more money with corrupt contractors on road projects anyway.

Incidentally a close friend of mine gifted me with a new toy, called a Mavic Pro Drone, which is a better version of our current Phantom 2 drone, which is stationed in MyTV office. But since my new drone is with me in my house, I have taken it for a lot of flights already. Since I know where exactly is the parallel road to Escario St. which was a project I initiated 20 years ago, I intend to take photographs of this road link and show it to the NEDA and DPWH people in the hope that they would change their minds and ease the traffic woes of our Cebuano motorists. Mind you, unlike many road-widening projects, when we construct this road, it won’t be disturbing the current traffic along Escario St.

When I was studying the numerous photographs that I took with my drone, it was truly a revelation of how thousands of houses have encroached the sides of our rivers and creeks. In my youth, I would bring my air rifle from my house, which is a short walk to the Guadalupe River and go down the cliff to walk on the riverbed of the Guadalupe River and shoot at birds. Those were the days when the population of Cebu was a mere 200,000 and our house had no neighbors. Our population has ballooned to 800,000 since.

I specifically pointed the drone camera downward to shoot at the riverbed and it was truly a huge surprise that in some places, you won’t even see the riverbed at all. The Guadalupe River is our biggest river in Cebu City, so I flew the drone also to the Lahug Creek and lo and behold, the creek no longer looked like the creek that it used to be… it looked more like a canal! This gave me a complete picture of the unbridled urban development growth in Cebu City and the Metro areas around Cebu and I’m very positive that this has also happened in Metro Manila.

When a few weeks ago, no less than President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte dubbed Boracay Island as a “cesspool” we really can’t blame the establishments of Boracay because they just build their facilities with the approval of the building officials in Barangay Malay. Less we have already forgotten, there is a three-meter easement where strictly no one is allowed to build so as not to encroach the riverside. Yet thanks to corruption… people build structures where they are not supposed to build. This is the culture of corruption that Pres. Duterte wants to destroy.

But while he is using the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to clean up Boracay and later Panglao in Bohol, however as President of the land, he must strictly enforce the law on all, not just the establishments in Boracay or Panglao, but also the squatters who clog our riverside and creeks which makes the whole country a cesspool! Better still is to re-visit the National Building Code (NBC) to attune it to urban growth for the hundred million Filipinos nationwide. For instance, our sidewalks are just too narrow for our pedestrians of today…this needs to be changed!

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