MANY 24-hour convenience stores located within a 100-meter radius from a school and hospital are either indifferent to or ignorant of Cebu City Ordinance 1413.
To those who don’t know, Ordinance 1413, or the Liquor Licensing Ordinance, prohibits the sale and serving of liquor within residential zones of urban areas and within a 100-meter radius from schools, hospitals, churches and other public places.
It also states that liquor can only be sold or served to persons 21 years of age or older.
But on Urgello St. in Barangay Sambag 1, a stone’s throw away from the Southwestern University and the Sacred Heart Hospital, there’s one convenience store that defies Ordinance 1413.
Apparently, the fine of at least P1,000 or imprisonment of at least six months, or both, depending on the court’s discretion, has not deterred its owner from breaking the law.
As for the students (and yes, they are mostly students), who buy liquor from this establishment, they, too, must not be aware of City Ordinance 309.
Ordinance 309, or the Anti-Noise Ordinance, is an amendment to the anti-noise pollution regulation, or Ordinance 1940, which makes it “unlawful for any person to willfully cause loud and disturbing noise... between the hours of 7 p.m. and 5 a.m. of the following day.”
Okay, so these kids don’t sing “My Way” in the middle of the night, but they still get rowdy and loud when they get intoxicated. And I’m talking about past midnight.
I know this because they’ve made the front of the pension house next to my grandmother’s property their makeshift outdoor bar.
Yes. They’re getting drunk on the side of the road. On somebody else’s property.
And they relieve themselves on our wall, too. I’ve even caught some of them urinating right into our garage.
They don’t know that if arrested, they can be fined P5,000 or face one-year imprisonment, or both. Assuming, of course, that they’ll only be charged with violating Ordinance 309.
The other week, I was forced to call “166” because a boy, who was no more than 12 years old, picked up a glass bottle and smashed it in the middle of the road for no other reason than to show off to his equally young companions that he could.
The bottle had been left by the side of the road by one of the customers of the convenience store.
When the two officers of the Mobile Patrol Group (vehicle 004) arrived, one of them asked if I called for barangay assistance.
I said “no.”
Sambag 1 officials are inutile, I told them. Otherwise, this drinking in front of the pension house almost every night and the ruckus that it creates would not be happening.
The people in the pension house said they’ve complained countless times. But their “cries for help” were ignored.
But I have had enough.
Even though I still go home to Banilad every night, I do go to my grandmother’s house to relax after work.
The operative word is “relax.” And I can’t do that with all that racket going on.