River wash
San Miguel is out on a charm offensive.
One can’t helped but be swamped by the amount of billboards, ads, and interviews-cum-infomercials deployed to tout its river rehab projects all over the metro. Whether zipping through and under the highways it constructed, or browsing through news channels, SMC is impressing us with its latest corporate social responsibility (CSR) drive.
And admittedly, the touted records are impressive. If true (one can never measure these things to the last inch, so normally it’s just a matter of upper management relying on underlings to report the figures). Millions of metric tons of waste scooped out? Kilometers of river beds “cleaned”, with San Juan River alone yielding 90,000 metric tons? Billions more in cash, manpower, and equipment reportedly deployed? What an amazing bonus to Filipinos. Someone cares about nature!
But one wonders: What’s driving SMC’s publicity drive? Is it really just the brownie points private companies enjoy whenever they tout their CSR projects? Is it just to improve the corporate governance scorecards whenever they’re measured by the stock exchange hawks, or foreign rating agencies? Or is something more sinister at play?
We do know San Miguel has a proposal to build yet another expressway, but this time over the Pasig River, floating around in the morass that’s the government bureaucracy. How’s that coming along? Is it getting traction? Or has the current administration put it in the backburner?
Remember that project? The news then was that SMC would build a 19-kilometer stretch, with six lanes, elevated over the length of the waterway. This would connect Mandaluyong, Manila, Pasig, Makati, and Taguig, and relieve traffic congestion. Sometimes, when stuck in EDSA traffic, one would indeed want to murder somebody, anybody, including a river. But I’m not serious, of course.
Is this river rehab press offensive meant to lubricate the outcry over the Pasig River expressway project? I mean, some portions of the San Miguel skyway empire already traverse (and actually sit on) esteros in Santa Mesa and Mandaluyong. Why not an entire river?
The Chao Phraya river runs through Bangkok and beyond, and one can see, on a daily basis, that it is a treasured resource. Sure, there are barges and ferries and motorboats, and even pleasure cruises with blaring loudspeakers plying the river. Commerce is never absent, and even dominate the river. But tourists, honeymooners, and locals congregate by the river side to enjoy the sights. Fishermen cast lazy rods trying to hook local catch. Bars offer riverside sunset views. High-rise condominiums and luxe hotels boast of fantastic river scenery. This is a fantastic source of psychic sustenance and national pride, all by its majestic self.
What a pity if we never develop these possibilities for our own Pasig River, just because a highway has been plunked on top of it. Which is why, despite the rehabilitation and reincarnation of other waterways, laudable initiatives that they are on their own, we should never let anyone uglify this one. Those good deeds shouldn’t work to whitewash this, if that were the intent.
There are rumors that the sitting First Lady has taken a shine to cleaning up Pasig River. Let’s hope this is true. Is this why the Inter Agency Council for Pasig River Urban Development was recently formed by this administration? A new council, right after former President Duterte disbanded the previous Pasig River Commission, after summarily announcing that this river was hopeless.
The cleaner it is, the easier to convince jaded denizens that this river is one carrying the potentialities of life, instead of just black, brackish sludge that’s better left buried.
Will the Inter-Agency Council be able to do what Duterte thought was impossible? We shall see. But hopefully, we never see a highway over it.
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