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Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Carvajal: Ready for the world?
By Orlando P. Carvajal
Participants of the recently concluded and extremely successful Advertising Congress asked themselves this question and answered it with a resounding YES. But if we asked this about Metro Cebu, I am afraid the answer would have to be a big fat NO.
Metro Cebu is not ready for the world by any stretch of the imagination. Those of us who have been to world-class cities (and that includes government officials on junkets) in Asia, Europe and North America, know that not one of the four cities comprising Metro Cebu is truly world class.
The few avenues that we have are not wide enough and are crudely paved, dusty and littered with trash. The streets are, of course, narrower and dustier still and even more crudely paved. There are essentially no sidewalks to speak of and what few we have are cluttered with obstructions. The rains have come and just about gone but the drainage problem remains.
Our airport has to be the seediest airport of its category in Asia. The walkways have not been scrubbed clean in what seems like a thousand years. The toilets smell for lack of deodorants. They have liquid soap dispensers but no soap, paper towel dispensers but no towels. At the docks, some shipping companies have come up with surprisingly nice passenger terminals but for the most part sea travel remains an ordeal both at the pier and in the boats.
Garbage, of course, as we all know is strewn all over the place. There are unofficial collection points but no collection bins so people just pile up their garbage. An interesting case is a wire fence along V. Rama in Guadalupe where people regularly hang their plastic trash bags to await collection but also for the whole world to see how crude and unsanitary we can be.
We are by no means child-friendly, not elderly-friendly and not handicapped-friendly. Our public buses, jeepneys and tricycles are torture rides for the elderly, the handicapped and those traveling with infants and small children. Our skywalks are impossible to negotiate for the elderly and the handicapped. There are no public amusement parks with the usual rides for children, no public tree parks where the elderly and handicapped can laze around and shoot the breeze with friends.
Cebu City’s mayor was heard at the congress to say that Cebu City does not need promoting anymore. I agree but for a different reason. In business school we learned that the fastest way to kill a bad product is to advertise it. Thus, if we promoted Metro Cebu as it is now, the more and the faster people will know that Metro Cebu as a world-class city exists only in the deluded minds (from working late nights doing surveillance work in bars and night clubs?) of some overworked politicians.
(November 23, 2005 issue)
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