Sun.Star Cebu
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Speak out: We love Mactan--way kurap-kurap
By Efrain T. Pelaez Jr.
President, Mactan Island Chamber of Commerce and Industry
TODAY a new Battle of Mactan is brewing.
It is not being fought with bolos, spears and swords but attitudes.
Are we about to lose our paradise island to poor planning, social indifference, political ineptness and environmental atrophy?
Unless we stand defiantly, as Lapulapu did 500 years ago, to confront these problems, we will surely lose this paradise.
Recently, a group of Mactan businessmen formed the Mactan Island Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Fed up with local government harassment and ineptitude, and the pervasive pattern of graft, it has set itself on course for affirmative action.
Mactan businessmen have muddled along all these years without much government support or tourism infrastructure.
If not for maverick entrepreneurs and private investment, there would still have been nothing on the island other than Mactan’s other true success story, the export zones of Peza.
No tourism estates, no tourism infrastructure like good roads, streetlights, sidewalks, utility services, waste management, and the like can be attributed to judicious government planning.
Everything is done in fits and starts, always long overdue with private business picking up most of the tab.
Asean summit
It is only because Mactan co-hosted the Asean summit in January 2007 that we finally got a few kilometers of highway repaved.
We also got a bit of facelift plus hundreds of overpriced streetlights and decorative lamp posts.
Our local officials went over the top with their Christmas lights and bamboo towers and landscaping projects.
We are all waiting to see the accounting and final bill of all these capricious and often ridiculous initiatives.
The hundreds of deco lamps and streetlights costing over P175 million could have housed over 3000 squatter families using the Gawad Kalinag model, with P50,000 per house.
We could have easily installed decent lighting for the vent in the same streets and routes used by the Asean summit guests and still would have provided 3,000 new homes for our Mactan brethren who live in squatter hovels.
All we ask is for an infinitesimal fraction to make our island tourist friendly before it is too late.
Dark side
While we see the good side of Mactan in some slick government TV ads and propaganda, there is a truly dark side to this equation.
One only has to take a short ride from the posh Shangrila Mactan Island Resort to see the contrast.
A few meters away from the Magellan Shrine area, you will already find a pathetic eyesore.
Streets that remain unpaved and have slipped into pitiful disrepair are found all over Mactan’s interiors.
Open garbage dumps, squatter homes multiplying annually and even illegal drugs sold in just about every barrio.
Is this the same Mactan glorified in our travel brochures?
Simple plan
Our chamber has drawn up a simple plan to save Mactan.
It is the common sense plan devoid of the frills and bureaucratic embroidery.
It will not cost much, and it is plain, simple, doable, cheap and logical.
It is made so that our leaders will note that we who love Mactan and invested in its future cannot even live in its past.
And that we will no longer accept apologies or apologists for the present, or trust them with our future.
We will not accept incompetent local government leaders either.
We have had enough clowns and showmen, enough traveling salesmen who try to sell our paradise to the world so tourists will come in droves.
Yet, we have done nothing to clean house and even put it in order.
If you cannot control the squatters, pick up the garbage, fix our streets or build proper sewers, why do we want to invite anyone here anyway?
If by some magic we can turn the clock back 20 or 30 years and start over with out pristine beaches and coral reefs and simple and welcoming townsfolk, we would be able to develop this island into one of the most coveted pieces of real estate on the planet.
But this we know can not be so.
Nevertheless, we businessmen can still do what we can to put our house and our island home in order.
Let us beg our leaders to take heed and listen to our plea.
And let us once again instill a culture of honesty and hospitality that is required of a real tourist paradise and investment haven.
We love Mactan---way kurap-kurap! That is our battle cry.
Election and governance in Lapulapu City
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