Friday, February 15, 2008 Editorial: Misplaced Priorities
TWO hundred million pesos is what Mayor Constantino Jaraula says the city would earn from the proposed Legislative Building within the current City Hall compound.
The earnings, the mayor says would be generated from the commercial spaces on the frontage of the soon-to-rise edifice.
In the building's interior would nestle the deluxe offices of the vice mayor and members of the City Council, the mayor says.
Two hundred million pesos -- a substantial potential revenues to ponder on, specially when contrasted to the millions in taxpayers' money being shamelessly poured into the two multi-million markets as subsidy for the unquestionably bungled Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) contracts the previous administration signed with a favorite contractor.
Two hundred million pesos-revenues that, if realized in the most ideal a time, would pole-vault Cagayan de Oro into a real corporate entity the Local Government Code so envisioned for all LGUs in the country.
But the mayor did not tell us how long that projected return of investment can be collected, so that's anybody's guess. Perhaps 10 years, or 20 long years-just as the former administration had assured us that Cogon and Carmen markets would turn into cash cows 20 to 25 years.
In the pattern of things, however, it has become apparent that every time a politician foists a multi-million project to the public, he is burdened not only of assuring it has some sense of value, but that it must also churn out some ROI.
Look at the utterly corrupted Telepono Sa Barangay-our Tinseltown's little version of ZTE scam--which former Mayor Vicente Emano and his minions had boasted would potentially generate revenues for the city by becoming another Misortel in the latter stages. Last we heard, the project only succeeded at exposing the true nature of the traditional politicians in our midst-pseudo moralists with insatiable avarice.
The mayor did not also tell us how much the proposed Legislative Building would cost, though we distinctly remember him mentioning earlier the amount of P300 million.
Three hundred million -- a huge amount enough to remodel our rundown JR Borja Hospital, so that our officials can stop embarrassing themselves-granting they are still capable of that-by outsourcing public health services to the German Hospital.
Look around gentlemen, and look into the deepest chamber of your hearts-granting they are still not corrupted-and summon your strengths to say that you can allow another costly undertaking while your fellowmen are starving; while they are being shot mercilessly and the police are helpless because they lack the necessary equipments; while they are dying of rabies because the City Health has limited supply of anti-rabies drugs.
Three hundred million -- for what? To make our officials comfortable while they debate on the next food items in our tables?
