Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Carvajal: Unsurprisingly not surprising By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
TO read about the City Council being surprised at the sorry state of neglect of the Cebu City Medical Center came unsurprisingly as no surprise to me. What was more of a surprise was the candidness in admitting publicly their surprise discovery. If you come and think about it, the admission of surprise amounted to an admission of official inefficiency and incompetence.
Local government executives manage the city or town enterprise pretty much in the same way business executives manage a company. The same classic functions of management apply, namely planning, leading, organizing, controlling (ensuring success by monitoring) and innovating.
All executives are responsible for making plans and budgets. They are, moreover, responsible in assuring the success of the plans by regularly monitoring their plans’ implementation, innovating in midstream or somehow adjusting to the changing variables of the working environment.
So why were the councilors surprised to find out that the medical center is so filthy like it was more a source of disease than of cure? They either had a plan for its cleanliness and efficiency or not. If they had a plan, then they could only be surprised if they failed to monitor the plan’s implementation. If they did not have a plan, then there was nothing to monitor and they should not have been surprised at the mess which is the logical result of a lack of planning and of proper implementation.
What really baffles me, though, is why they were surprised when they had earlier agreed with Mayor-on-leave Tomas Osmeña to sell the medical center for being too costly to rehabilitate and maintain.
Whatever happened, I hope our councilors will surprise us with a workable plan and budget for the rehabilitation of something as important as the Cebu City Medical Center. I earnestly hope their candidness in admitting surprise stems from an honest re-assessment of their sycophant stand on Tomas’ proposal to rid the City of the responsibility of running the Center.
Still on the subject of cleanliness and surprise, I wonder when they will be surprised at the general filthiness of Cebu City stemming from a very unsanitary and inefficient trash collection system, indiscriminate littering and the nasty habit of people urinating in not so hidden nooks and crannies along our sidewalks. Moreover, for a modern city like Cebu to be the locus of a dengue outbreak, its sanitation has to be greatly compromised.
When will our city officials get their acts together and implement more than a makeshift cleanliness and sanitation program that is fit for what we like to call the Queen City of the South? Maybe this time, our councilors can really surprise us.
