Labella offers loyalty, integrity

Edgardo Labella
Edgardo Labella

FOR a long time, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella, who are both vying for the mayoral seat, were allies under Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK).

It was only during the election in 2016 when the two parted ways. Labella ran for vice mayor under Team Rama.

Unlike his opponent, Labella does not come from a political family, but he does not consider this a handicap.

“I come from an ordinary family. I am not wealthy nor I have a political lineage but I am willing to serve with utmost loyalty, integrity and I ask you to support me to be able to serve our beloved city,” he said during the debate organized by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines Cebu City Chapter on Friday, May 10.

What are the city’s pressing problems and how do they intend to address it if they are elected mayor? These are excerpts of Labella’s answers. (SunStar Cebu reached out to Osmeña for an interview but there was no reply.)

LABELLA: Our city’s biggest difficulties have in common the problem of being stuck. We are facing a three-headed monster: floods, traffic, and garbage. But the city is also stuck with inefficient leadership. The present administration, sadly, has sat on the monster for too long. People are tired of sluggish leaders who have become part of the problem instead of working hard to solve it. If the point is to defeat our monstrous floods, traffic and garbage, then first we must get ourselves unstuck from bad leadership. The immediate solution is to keep our democratic spirits mobile, to vote wisely and to change leadership.

Traffic and Transportation

The most immediate concern is to light up our streets and roads. Proper street lighting ensures the safety of commuters and prevents accidents that block the flow of vehicles. The more far-reaching solution is to study the volume of traffic itself, and to find ways to decrease this volume. Once more, we need to mobilize a team of traffic experts with three main tasks. The first task is to use new smart technology that can regulate flow by calculating the number of vehicles operating on the streets, especially at intersections. The second task is to study the use of nodes for dropping off and fetching commuters, making dense areas accessible only through these nodes and reserving them strictly for pedestrian traffic as well as light electric shuttles. The third task is more challenging: the creation of more efficient, energy-friendly and crime-free public transport to discourage the use of individual cars.

Garbage and Solid Waste Management

The problem of garbage is linked to the floods we suffer. At the most immediate level, we need to recognize that there are different kinds of garbage. The city needs to establish proper segregation and reuse at ground level. At this level, excellent solutions have already been developed in other places in the Philippines. But the far-reaching question is: where does our garbage go? That is the chief problem my administration wishes to address. The model I urge our citizens to adopt is the model of Waste to Energy (WTE). If we can pin down our segregation methods and implement them well, we can work with industries and countries that convert garbage into new materials as well as energy.

Flood

Floods are costly for Cebuanos. The City can no longer afford the past administration’s ad-hoc solutions and on the other extreme, complex to-do lists that are never undertaken. My administration has both an immediate plan and a long-term system to set up. Feasibility, practicality and cost are the prime concerns in these proposed solutions. The immediate solution is, first, to dredge the waterways and clear them of garbage and second, to prevent the return of litter through vigorous city policies and educational programs on waste management at the barangay level. The long-term solution is to set up a task force made up of urban planners and civil engineers to do two main things: first, to design new integrated sewer systems to speed up the drainage in problem areas and second, to build a better dam that not only collects water but regulates the flow of run-off from mountain areas into the city lowlands. Because this long-term solution involves designing public infrastructure, we need to look at models that have worked elsewhere in the world and to study what applies best for our city.

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