ONE cultural trait we have is the proclivity to dump problems and their solutions on personages or entities other than ourselves. Like, we blame the National Government for all the wrongs in our society and expect it to solve them for us. We may not be blaming God for our problems but we do depend on him, to a fault, for their solution.
Take our lack of hygiene and sanitation which is making us vulnerable to all kinds of infectious diseases. Why can’t we come together to solve our water problem? Why do we allow politicians to stymie the new MCWD Board that urgently needs to hunker down for a long-term solution to this problem? Yes, I am saying why are we not banging on the doors of city hall to demand for quick action?
We are told to wash our hands constantly with soap and water or alcohol if water is not available. But how can we when there is no water? Or if there is water how does the marginalized sector observe proper hygiene and sanitation when it cannot afford soap or alcohol?
The City Council is asking restaurants, hotels and malls to provide their comfort rooms with running water, anti-bacterial soap and paper towels. But are not the comfort rooms of these classy establishments more sanitary and hygienic than the (dis)comfort rooms of government owned buildings like barangay halls, bus terminals, and public markets, especially.
Yet I do not write to blame the local government. I write to put the blame on us who allow political leaders to neglect us, who allow them to stop discussing lack of water when excess rain water is flooding us, and who allow them all the technical and legal excuses to delay the solution of our two water problems: no water during the dry season and wasted flood water during the wet.
Actually, the lack of hygiene and sanitation is most pronounced in poor sections of Metro Cebu. These are obviously places where informal settlers eke out a living in makeshift houses on squatted land without running water, drainage, and other hygiene and sanitation basics.
Again I am not blaming government. I am blaming us who let them get away with doing nothing to provide informal settlers decent housing and security of tenure in relocation sites that have running water and adequate drainage and waste disposal systems.
I include here bishops and priests who could otherwise lend their respectable voices to the poor when these go to city hall to ask for relocation and housing. But no, they care only that souls go to heaven even if bodies are weak and sickly in their hell-holes.
It is also in our elitist culture that government people will always get away with everything we allow them to. Hence, until we admit the blame is on us our social problems will never ebb.