More parks and playgrounds is a great idea!

That Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña is planning to buy land to develop children’s parks and playgrounds is something that he should have done a long time ago. But obviously, he had other priorities in the past. However, Mayor Osmeña is not yet done with his public service and will be running for Congressman in the South District of Cebu City, so this proposal might just become a reality. So let’s exhort him to work for this project. Too often people make promises for our children, but it’s only lip service like what happened to a proposed park in Mandaue City.

Having parks or playgrounds doesn’t necessary mean purchasing a huge property, unless you want to build something similar to New York’s Central Park. Last year when we were in Taipei I couldn’t help but notice that a 200 square meter area at the corner of a community (we call it barangay here) had a playground for children - a swing, a plastic slide and little horses on a spring. That’s all you need. Of course, if a barangay has the land, it would be great to have a larger park. However, we should caution the city that these parks are not for vendors or night markets. It should be a free space for people to breathe but not live inside. So let’s go for this project Mayor Tom! Aside from the Parian Plaza, we only have the Plaza Independencia, the Humabon Park and Fuente Osmeña. The other open spaces we have in Cebu aside from the Talamban Park are the cemeteries.

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A cow that was brought to the Cebu City Abattoir was able to snap away from its leash. It instinctively ran as far away as it could from the abattoir. While the cow injured a few pedestrians on its short-lived run for freedom, it was brought to a stop in a hail of gunfire from the Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT). People are saying that the SWAT police used overwhelming firepower. But you can’t blame the police as they are only equipped with the firearms they have in their inventory. How we wish that they had a tranquilizer gun… that would have stopped the cow. 

This incident reminds me of that famous tourism attraction in San Fermin, Pamplona, Spain where they hold an annual Bull Run into the city streets from July 7 to 14. The streets are crowded with tourists and many are gored by the runaway bulls. What happened in our streets was a case of a solitary bull, yet it injured five people. There should be lessons learned here: Farmers who bring their bulls to the abattoir should have extra leash on their animals. Of course, we hope SWAT can get a tranquilizer gun which can be useful in a large city like Cebu City.

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Gasoline prices have started to increase yesterday. We Cebuanos can only sigh in frustration that our fuel woes have fallen on deaf ears. Last week Cebu Business groups reiterated the cries of the Cebuanos to Malacañang on Cebu’s getting the wrong end of the fuel prices in this country. But in fairness to Malacañang, they have already done what they are supposed to do in sending the Task Force DoJ-DoE to look into our case where they even came to Cebu to listen to our arguments in Camp Lapu-Lapu.

If any, what the Cebu Business groups should do at this point is make an appeal to the Big 3 Oil companies, at least to spare Cebu any increases at this time. Slapping us with a P2 increase at this time means burdening our motorists even more! The problem here is, the Cebu business groups have only barked and that’s it. Hey guys, we are Cebuanos! We’re supposed to be better than our counterparts in Manila. We’ve had this problem for almost a year now. I dare say that we ought to think out of the box!

The problem we are facing is a serious lack of leadership in the business groups, as Cebu has already too many of them. We have the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (CCCI) led by Pres. Sammy Chioson; the Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (MCCI) led by Pres. Eric Ng; the Mactan Chamber of Commerce (MCC); and the Cebu Business Club headed by Pres. Dondi Joseph. Surely we’ll see these business organizations band together and look for “out-of-the-box” solutions to our problems.

For example, what if the Cebu business groups sit down with one of the Big 3 Oil Companies and get assurances that they would freeze their prices until we reach partly with Manila’s fuel prices? What will happen here is, we can boycott the other 2 Oil companies into submission and get our fuel only from one oil supplier. In the end it could hopefully trigger a price war and bring prices at least at par with Manila. Of course, I submit that we could very well be facing a well-entrenched oil cartel and not one oil company might agree to sit down with Cebuano business leaders.

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