EDITORIAL - Far more serious than a mere "street war"

Cebu City and its next door neighbor to the north, Mandaue City, are currently engaged in a tit-for-tat involving an exchange of traffic bans that one city is slapping on certain types of vehicles from the other.

Cebu City started the hostilities by banning Mandaue City jeepneys from entering certain streets in the former. Mandaue City belatedly responded by banning Cebu City garbage trucks from passing through on their way to a dumpsite in the municipality of Consolacion.

Cebu City upped the ante by slapping a complete ban on Mandaue City jeepneys. As of this writing, Mandaue City is yet to respond to the latest provocation. There are, however, already some well-meaning calls made for both cities to come to a truce in the name of public interest.

It is being argued that while both local governments may have their own reasons for their actions, it is actually the general public that is bearing the brunt of these actions. Regardless of their validity, all these actions will have some effect, on way or the other, on the public.

However, all these entreaties and well-meaning calls for a truce seem to proceed from the understanding that what is happening is rooted and merely involves a traffic problem, leading one newspaper to call it “street wars.”

Well, it may seem that way on the surface. But what is happening is not just a simple street war. The garbage component of the war reaches down far deeper than just an exchange of traffic bans. 

The bottomline is, the garbage problem of Cebu City is not Mandaue City’s. Far beyond the complications of a “street war,” the safety and health of Mandaue City residents stand to be affected by the garbage problem of Cebu City, which Cebu City failed to properly solve.

Cebu City did not make provisions for its garbage problem when it had time to do so. And now, pressed for time, it is forced to resort to methods that, unfortunately, stand to inflict collateral damage on the safety and health of Mandaue City residents.

Cebu City has an area of 291.2 sq kms. Mandaue City, by comparison, only has 34.87 sq kms while Consolacion has 142.20 sq kms. If Cebu City is bigger than the other two LGUs combined, why can’t it situate its own garbage dump within its borders instead of bothering others?