Friday, November 16, 2007 Cebu City drafts 10-year plan
USING the agenda of 11 different sectors, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña wants to draft a 10-year plan for the growth of the city, which he said will be responsive to the needs of all sectors.
Leaders of the business, urban poor, education, peace and order advocates and other sectors have been holding a series of meetings to set the agenda of their respective groups.
The activity will culminate in a plenary session where the agenda will be presented and consolidated. This will form part of the “Cebu City Plus 10” policy direction plan.
Osmeña said the activity is a compressed approach to long-term planning, which will take into consideration the concerns of all sectors.
“It’s good to know what the sectors feel and want, it’s good to know what others have in mind, what their agenda is. It will be the basis for supporting policy direction,” Osmeña said of the project.
The plan is a time-bound approach to addressing concerns of various sectors, and setting targets for the solution of specific concerns.
“It has to include figures. For example, if we want to improve the literacy rate, we have to set the target. What is the present status and the difference between that and the target, then we can say by how much we have to increase it every year,” he explained.
In their discussions, some 100 representatives of each sector were asked to discuss how they want their sector to be in 10 years and what they think are the obstacles that will prevent them from reaching their goals.
Their sector’s concerns and requests from the City Government will be enumerated in their agenda, which they will present during the plenary.
Since there was no sector that was willing to tackle peace and order concerns, the mayor volunteered to discuss the matter.
“I’m not doing this for myself, I’m doing this for the next administration, that’s why I told Vice Mayor Michael Rama to sit down in all the discussions and listen to every sector,” the mayor said.
Osmeña has previously said that Rama will be their party’s mayoral candidate in the 2010 elections. (LCR)
