EDITORIAL — Good role models

As per reports in our sister publication BANAT News, Cebu City Councilor Nyza “Nice” Archival wants stricter enforcement of the city ordinance prohibiting people from just spitting and urinating everywhere.

Councilor Archival also wants people to clean after themselves in public places, especially in food parks, adopting the CLAYGO (Clean As You Go) attitude commonly practiced in public places abroad.

Indeed, we always have this attitude that people will clean up after us in food courts and such places. And while many such places do designate personnel to do so, it would be better if we have the attitude to just do it ourselves.

Indeed, some of our public places stink to high heavens. The sight of people just relieving themselves everywhere has become so common some joke that while in other countries urinating in public is against the law, here in the Philippines urinating in public is against the wall. It would be better if this cavalier attitude toward public cleanliness is changed.

It’s nice that Nice Archival wants people to change for the better.

But will stricter enforcement solve this problem? Well, yes. Perhaps in the short run but not the long one. Having more people watch out for, apprehend, and penalize violators might actually work, but only for a while.

Time and again we have seen that once stricter enforcement is loosened, violators will go back to their old ways, especially when no one is looking.

As we like to keep saying, the best way to change an attitude is to have good role models. In this case that would be role models who will keep doing what’s right even if no one is watching, and who realize that the reward is a clean environment that they themselves can appreciate and will give back to them in ways they may not even know.

How do we get these good role models? It all goes back to discipline. Something many of us lack.