Tuesday, September 02, 2008 Molintas: Another disaster in the making By Marionne Molintas Beached
AND you thought that the garbage problem was stinky. Hah! Wait until your toilet bowl starts overflowing. Excuses to those who are eating.
As we all know, Baguio City was built by the Americans to accommodate 20,000 people. Presently there are roughly 300,000 residents, a ton of hotels and restaurants, students who spend most of the year in the city, tourists who come in seasonally and of course those who form part of the transient population.
The latter are those who come to the city during the day, conduct their business and hi-ho back from where they came from. Where do you think all the excrements of these human beings go to and is it a bottomless pit? Absolutely not!
This situation is another disaster in the making. IF nobody looks into it, like NOW, then we are all in for another stinky episode that could extend longer than Mara Clara's airtime.
Arch. Joseph Alabanza once discussed this in a forum of some kind and what happened? Nada. Zilch. Kaput. Some even tried to stop him from talking about it, I heard. And allegedly the antagonists were...drumroll please...the tourist industry. Ta-dah!
And so the crap in the sewer system keeps increasing every time a toilet bowl is flushed. Can't say the sky is the limit or it is on the house now, can we? And why do they have to shush Arch. Alabanza for bringing out something that deserves what is called the usual preferential action? Bad publicity? Dirty laundry? As if this will not blow up in our faces one day if it is left unattended.
Yeah, yeah. Tourist this and tourist that. You think the tourists would want to spend their vacation using latrines because the amenities are not working properly? Should I even think of the tourists when the residents stand to suffer more from this? Why should they be the priority? For hospitality's sake? Crap! Would you invite a visitor in your house if all your drain pipes are draining the other way? I don't think so.
Hasn't the city gained enough from tourists to have the sewers upgraded? An engineer friend of mine said in the late '90s the city encouraged everybody to tap into the sewer system. Of course, but now, not so much pressure for a building owner to do so. Obviously, there is something wrong.
Some would say I am exaggerating. I say better late than never does not apply to this scenario. Then again some would say, I should have not put this on paper because it is tantamount to washing dirty laundry in public. I say, eat sheet. Yes, toilet paper sheets if you must. It is about time we look at what we can fix now before it gets destroyed and not the other way around. Maintenance is the order of the day and not troubleshooting.
The garbage situation was a wake-up call. The city is bursting at the seams and there is nothing we can do to control that. Unless the city relocates them somewhere. Lesser voters for...ehem.
If there is anything the tourism sector can do and be good at is to look into everything that affects the industry not only now but also in the near future. And I know for a fact, oftentimes, city officials could use not only direction and prodding but nagging for them to realize they have to do something now before office terms expire.
