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Thursday, June 08, 2006
Wenceslao: Scuttled water project
By Bong O. Wenceslao
There are problems that can only be solved if leaders breach the bounds of their turfs. Like, say, ensuring steady water supply for Cebu. The problem is that recent effort to unify stakeholders to address the matter is being hampered by the refusal of some local government officials to cooperate.
And unfortunately, for reasons extraneous to the topic.
I am referring to the 25-year water resource management action plan, a product of a three-year study by experts under the Water Remind Project.
The implementation of the plan, which hinges much on the unity of politicians and water sector stakeholders, is now lost in uncertainty with the refusal of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña to cooperate.
The mayor’s announced reason for this is actually an offshoot to his long-running feud with the University of San Carlos-Water Resource Center (USC-WRC) on how to manage Cebu’s watershed, part of which is within Cebu City.
Of course, it didn’t help any that USC-WRC is being accused of mishandling project funds.
But as I said, mishandling of funds is extraneous to the issue of water.
Besides, USC-WRC is not accountable to Osmeña but to the Dutch Government that provided the P115 million financial assistance to the Water Remind Project. What is important here is the integrity of the action plan itself and the need to move it to the implementation stage.
This, though, is not the first instance that the mayor has messed up what I consider laudable moves from some sectors. Remember suggestions for a Metro Cebu coordinative body that would have unified the area’s approach to, say, traffic? Osmeña apparently would only work with such a body if he dominates it. The result? Nada.
Indeed, what is obvious in the mayor’s tirades against Water Remind is that he wants to juxtapose his own suggestions on how to manage Cebu’s water resource over the conclusions and recommendations of experts that conducted what is presumably a scientific study on the water issue. Or he prefers personal interest above public good.
For what does this harping about privatizing Cebu’s protected areas because “private people take better lands than the government”? Even with that assertion alone, my hair already stands on end. What the mayor wants is to break the dam that has protected our watershed and allow speculators and exploiters to flood the area.
What is unfortunate for water sector stakeholders is that, with Osmeña’s dominance over Cebu City politics, Cebuanos will have more of the same mayor in the next few years. So much so that unless a common ground is found between Osmeña’s stance and that of the water sector stakeholders, or unless Water Remind gives in to the mayor’s urgings, solution to the water problem in Cebu will remain in limbo.
That, dear readers, is how the cookie crumbles.
TEXTREAX. S. Magdadaro of Mandaue City, on the plan of Mayor Tomas Osmeña to arm with M-16 barangay captains in the city’s hinterlands: “Kuyaw kaayo kanang gustong armasan ni mayor ang mga barangay kapitan. It would result in either the rebels or big-time druglords ang mohawod sa kabukiran through massive recruitment to their folds.”
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ 0915-9228651/my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 8, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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