Saturday, August 16, 2008 Editorial: How much longer, our complacence
DAVAO City stands out among the highly urbanized cities in the country because not only does it pride itself with a booming economy brought in by business operations much like the businesses in Makati, the epitome of business success in this part of the globe, but also because this economic growth is solidly backed up by other solid foundations, like agricultural outputs and eco-tourism treats.
Ergo, Davao is not just a booming metropolis. It is also an agricultural economy and a city that can rake in more tourism dollars by harnessing all its natural attractions -- the eagle, marine turtles and mighty Davao River among them.
With the boom are more and more people, thus our population has boomed to around 1.3 million, of which more than a million may not even have gone beyond the urban domains of the city.
What we have then is a tightly packed urban land and vast, quiet, and rarely explored rural outback. Through both of this is the absence of a sewerage system and a seeming lackadaisical attitude toward the fresh water we have been gifted with.
Last Thursday, Davao City Water District and the US Agency for International Development (USAid) gathered stakeholders anew to drum up concern for the absence of sewerage systems; to inculcate in each and everyone that our continued lack of concern for all the sewage and feces of 1.3 million people that we are disposing everyday can deprive us, not only of our health, but of a very previous commodity other countries are willing to kill for -- water.
We cannot forever say we do not have the money for a sewerage system. As the data from the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program showed that the country loses more than P77.8 billion annually due to poor sanitation.
There is money, it's just that our lack of foresight and continued belief that fresh water will forever be coming out from our faucets lull us into seeing only sick people needing immediate medical assistance, a.k.a. Lingap para sa Mahihirap, and not a problem of not just lack but absence of sanitation.
This can be observed from the fact that the city never ever questions where all those poso negro carriers really dump their sludge. A visit to one of these poso negro services will show, the sludge isn't there. But where? Go ask the fishes.
