RAFI partners with the Province of Cebu

There is no doubt that the Pasigarbo sa Sugbo Festival last Saturday evening was the biggest extravaganza I have ever seen in the Province of Cebu. More so that the top honors went to Bantayan Island’s “Palawod” which my dear friend, Mayor Geralyn Escario described to me as a dance of the marine life. It took 76 dancers and 60 propsmen for Bantayan Island to win the P1 million top prize money, plus their winning Best in Costume worth P200,000, Best in Street Dancing, Best Production and Ms. May Robyn Mangubat bagged as runner up for Festival Queen.

The Pasigarbo Festival will become one of Cebu’s biggest tourism drawers in the years to come. With the Sinulog Festival in January and with the Pasigarbo Festival the tourists will surely enjoy coming to Cebu. They can come either for the Sinulog or the Pasigarbo Festival.

But if you think that the 440th Anniversary celebration of the Province of Cebu was just all fun and dancing, you’re dead wrong! Yesterday, the Province of Cebu held the 1st Expanded Green and Wholesome Environment that Nurtures (eGWEN) program which is partnered by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. (RAFI) as an emerging models in local governance.

Sir Bobby Aboitiz once more explained his “Bugsay” Principle that he imparted a couple of weeks ago at the 4th Aboitiz Future Leaders Summit that seemed to fit the eGwen logo. The entire island of Cebu becomes a banca with oars or “Bugsay” on both sides of the Province where everyone paddles in one direction. The eGwen is a 5-year program that aims to make Cebu an ideal place to live, work, play, invest and do business. All that is needed is to make the Province a more pleasing place to live, by cleaning up their surroundings, getting rid of stray dogs and inculcating a “pride of place” as Cebuanos.

In short, from its original concept of “Suroy-Suroy sa Sugbo”, this project has now opened the eyes of the people living in the Provinces of the beauty of their own municipality. This motivated them to do many projects conceptualized by the Capitol under the GWEN projects. When ask by the media why this is called eGwen, Ms. Domini Chua of RAFI pointed out that the Governor’s name was already placed in most of the ongoing projects being done in the various municipalities, hence it is merely an identification of this successful program.

All the big or small projects under her name were very successful because they had a good follow through. Hence, RAFI decided to use that name as it would make the people in the Province realize that this project will also succeed like most of the GWEN projects.

The eGwen partnership with RAFI is merely to develop, assess and evaluate the various projects in the different municipalities and the 1,096 barangays in Cebu Province and create a scorecard where everyone can compare notes with the other municipalities. This undoubtedly motivates the Local Government Units (LGU) to come up with projects that promote good governance in their localities and in turn, make their municipalities become a tourist destination or for ordinary people to live in with a pride of place.

I also asked Gov. Garcia what would happen to this program when elections come. We know elections tend to be divisive. But Gov. Gwen was confident that this program will not be affected by politics as it is already beyond politics. This is why so many LGUs are already moving in this direction because their people are supporting this program. More importantly, many officials in Cebu Province have now realized that good governance also means good politics!

Soon, as Sir Bobby Aboitiz believes, Cebuanos will be paddling their “Bugsay” in one direction, that is to better governance for LGUs and to recreate the Province of Cebu as a place Filipinos or foreigners would want to live, play and do business. Soon, those who paddle their “Bugsay” in the wrong direction will become a small minority or even irrelevant. So we wish the Gov. Gwen Garcia and RAFI good luck in this noble endeavor!

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The dreaded Dengue fever has once more struck in Cebu City with deadly consequences. I don’t know how and why this cannot be prevented. Let’s start with the barangay captains and their councilmen; surely they know that because of the sporadic rains, there will be areas within their barangays that get flooded and become potential Dengue breeding ground. It is simple enough to put oil in stagnant water to stop the Dengue mosquito from breeding. Then there are many shanties with tires on top of their roofs to keep them from blowing off. Let’s get rid of these tires!

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