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Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Citizens should take more active role: mayor
It is not just politicians and leaders who can bring Cebu City and the rest of the country forward, Mayor Tomas Osmeña said, that is why ordinary citizens should take a more active role in nation building.
At the commemoration of the 108th Independence Day yesterday, Osmeña lamented that some people have forgotten the importance of the celebration and its true meaning.
While City Hall officials and employees woke up early to attend the simple ceremony at the Malacañang sa Sugbo, the mayor suspected most of the youth and some workers were celebrating a non-working day.
“Why do we have to feel this way? This is because in the way we manage our affairs in the country, we make the people feel it’s only the leaders who are involved in nation building,” Osmeña said in his speech.
“But nation building is not done by leaders alone. I think it’s done by people like you who feel and believe they can do something,” he continued.
Cebuanos, he said, can help simply by using pedestrian lanes when crossing the street and throwing their garbage not on the sidewalk but on government-provided garbage cans.
He also urged his constituents to report to the barangay officials any illegal drug activity in their area as a way of helping improve Cebu City.
Meanwhile, Police Regional Office (PRO) 7 Chief Silverio Alarcio Jr. and Acting Cebu City Police Director Melvin Gayotin said there was no untoward incident during yesterday’s celebration.
Last Sunday noon, Cebu and the rest of Central Visayas were declared under full alert in anticipation of protest actions or any violence that may arise during the event.
With the grenade explosion in a public market in Lipa City, Batangas that left eight people wounded and the two other incidents in Quezon City and Manila last Sunday night, Gayotin said two battalions of policemen from the Regional Mobile Group (RMG), Regional Training School, Cebu Provincial Police Office and the Cebu City Police Office were detailed as crowd dispersal management.
He also ordered the Mobile Patrol Group to conduct random patrols in business establishments, while, all the 11 police stations were told to initiate random checkpoints in their respective areas.
Militant groups and cause-oriented organizations, Gayotin said, staged protest actions at the downtown area and later left after airing their anti-government sentiments.
For his part, Osmeña said the citizens should do more “because making the country strong does not lie in the hands of leaders alone.”
“Every time you have a child (studying) his lesson or (sacrificing) for your children to finish their studies, that’s real nation building. As a mayor, I act as the cheerleader to make you believe in yourselves,” he said.
After the Independence Day celebration, Osmeña joined some 325 out-of-school youth during their Boy Scouts of the Philippines investiture ceremony at the Plaza Independencia.
The neighborhood scouting program is one of the projects of the Children’s Hour and the Share-A-Child-Movement to prevent juvenile delinquency.
The children from nine barangays in the city and the Community Scouts Rehabilitation and Youth Guidance Center were introduced to scouting to keep them away from vices and illegal activities.
Under the program, they were also taught a variety of skills that can help them earn a living and help them go back to school, said lawyer Esperanza Valenzona, president of the Share-A-Child-Movement. (LCR/JST)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 13, 2006 issue)
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