December 6, 2007 | 12:00am
A Cebu-born lawyer who now makes Manila his home (he resides there for more than half a century), came for a brief nostalgic visit. That was not the first occasion Atty. Freddie de la Cruz touched base with his birth province but according to Freddie, his previous homecomings were for still shorter and less eventful periods. It was, thus, my pleasure driving him to spots, some already existing when he was a young boy and others sprouted in his absence, if only as physical basis to compare how much our city has become.
I brought him to two reclamation areas. He said that although the north area was reclaimed not long after he left our city, he learned that the Cebuanos did not spend a single centavo for the project. His observant eye, however, could not miss the glaring point many of us have taken for granted. Probably just wanting to ask a rhetorical question, he wondered aloud why, in spite of the passage of more than four decades, it still has so many idle portions.
When we came to the South Real Properties, his facial expression demonstrated a profound concern to my information that to accomplish this project, we the tax payers have been burdened with more than a billion pesos of indebtedness. It was definitely more than a smirk as he inquired “Cebu City residents owe more than a billion pesos for this reclamation?”
Heading to his parents’ town of origin, Balamban, at the western side of Cebu island, I took him thru the transcentral highway making sure to point to him, along the way, that we, too, have a flyover. It happened that I remembered their construction costs. When I told Atty de la Cruz that the flyover was estimated at near P80 million and that for the 40 plus kilometer transcentral highway our government spent more than P300 million, he let go of his legal lingo which, considering a quick mental mathematical calculation realized a tremendous disparity of costs, could very well substitute for an expletive. “Res ipsa loquitor!” could not be taken to stand for a foul language for it, in fact, simply meant, as still does, let the thing speak for itself.
Cebu City’s two reclamations, the flyover and the transcentral highway, indeed, speak for themselves. It is not the fault of private land owners that there are non-performing assets in the north reclamation area. The failure of the city administration to draw plans to help the owners make these pieces of valuable real estate assets productive speaks eloquently not only of the administrators’ lack of foresight but altruistically, of their condemnable negligence. Their proclamation of having cultivated a healthy investment climate is severely denied by the presence of so many idle lots at the north reclamation area.
Then too, with the north area not being fully occupied and developed yet and with the City of Mandaue having its own vast expanse of another reclamation, the South Real Properties is too much ahead of its time. Truth is, the reclaimed land of Mandaue, antedating our own South Reclamation by about a decade, is admittedly more settled and naturally is bound to generate the interest of investors. It is not helpful that Atty. De la Cruz observed a good portion of the SRP is still under water. Anyone who drives along the South Coastal Road can perhaps agree to the claim that this project may not yet be complete.
What drew the analytical mind of Freddie was the comparative costing of the flyover and the transcentral highway. The flyover, including the approaches, is one half kilometer long, more or less. With the P80 million for the project, my computation is that its cost is about P100 thousand per lineal meter. Hoping that I am not wrong, let me repeat that, P100 thousand per lineal meter. In comparison, the 40 kilometer-plus concrete highway to Balamban, carved from seemingly impregnable mountains, only cost the government about P7,500 per lineal meter.
Atty. de la Cruz surely tried his best to converse with me in profound Cebuano, to cover his disappointment over the irreconcilable costs of our infra structure projects. That emotion which he could not suppress, he muted with res ipsa loquitor!
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