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Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Speak out: Accept AIM survey
By Ritchie D. Nolasco
Banilad, Cebu City
Let's just face the music and be honest with ourselves. Cebu City's poor rating in this year's Top 20 Philippine Cities Survey, conducted by the Cebuano participants under the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), is in fact realistic and credible!
The city economy is booming, especially when it comes to real estate, urban development and expanding businesses. But the unemployment rate is still worsening and overall Cebu City's economy has been easily out-sprinted and overtaken by other booming cities like Makati, Quezon and Muntinlupa.
In short, our city is not modernizing as fast and is not as dynamic as the others.
What is shameful is that the South Reclamation Project (SRP) still has no real business, commercial and residential establishments until now. Not even electricity and water system.
City infrastructure is rather poor. The South Coastal Road at the SRP is not being utilized fully and does not really decongest traffic on the old highway.
Compared to other cities, Cebu City's streets are very narrow, are deteriorating very fast and are truly unable to handle the amount of vehicles traveling daily.
Other than a few flyovers, the city has no mass transit system (example: the LRT), no skywalk (Makati has one) and no underground tunnels.
Not only that, the handling of such new projects lacks transparency, especially with the proposed new Mabolo flyover being opposed by residents and business establishments.
Cebu City has very poor power supply which explains why there are more scheduled and accidental brownouts happening in more parts of the city. How can we attract more call centers, IT firms and an Enchanted Kingdom theme park with insufficient power supply?
City Hall is doing nothing about it!
With all of these information gathered, it comes to no surprise why Cebu City failed so badly to make the Top 20 cities list of the AIM.
Mayor Tommy Osmena refuses to believe the results, which automatically means he does not believe in the opinions of his citizens. This goes the same to all other city leaders.
Wake up and smell the coffee Cebu City! It is time to stop dreaming and start working to make our city better! Just accept the AIM survey results and work harder!
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (April 5, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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