Some reservations
The report of Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella, on his 100 days as our chief executive, which he gave last Wednesday, was heartwarming. It was a well-crafted oratorical piece. From the accounts of friends who attended the affair, it was a well-composed speech containing a motley of partially-started projects and grandiose plans for the future. Those of us who did not personally hear the oratory relished the glowing headline reportage carried by our local dailies the following day. Honestly though, I expected Labella to tell us what he did in his first 100 days of administration as a kind of prelude what to await the rest of his mayorship. Since he also dwelt on things yet to come, I would rather call his message as something like 100 days and more.
Two items in his report are worth our attention. The first item is the environmental project he initiated few weeks ago. When he earlier unfolded his plan to plant and grow three million trees in our city in three years, he boosted the morale of ordinary mortals like me who, in our modest ways, have been trying our best “to plant and grow” trees ourselves. Can anyone imagine how my heart was tickled pink to learn that on the very first day he led in tree planting about 50,000 trees were planted? Really, I was very excited especially when I compared that eye-popping accomplishment to the fact that in the last 10 years of my efforts, I have only managed to plant a little more than 300 trees each of Mabolo and Tugas and about 1,000 trees of other species.
Despite my elation on the launching of this ambitious program, I have some reservations. His target is 1,000,000 trees for each year of his term. From July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020, the first year, we only have practically eight months left. If the city government holds a monthly tree planting activity, it has to plant about 120,000 trees per outing. Considering that during the launching of the program, the mayor mobilized the entire city personnel and barangay workers joined forces with private groups in planting, yet only 50,000 were reportedly planted, the computed remaining target of 120,000 trees per outing in each of the remaining eight months is rather stiff.
There were three areas chosen when the mayor launched the “tree planting-tree growing” program. The South Road Properties became the site for a great portion of the 50,000 young trees then planted. I had to surmise that if 15,000 trees were planted in SRP at the density of 1,000 trees per hectare, about 15 hectares have been dedicated to this project. For the future to benefit from this program, 15 hectares cannot be devoted to commercial undertakings. The city cannot anymore use additional portions of the SRP because the reclamation was not designed to make a proverbial forest of the reclaimed land. This is a valuable property for which Cebuanos paid billions, and converting it into a forest is wasteful.
As a second item, Mayor Labella, talked about a futuristic plan of the SM-Ayala consortium to put up businesses at the SRP capable of generating direct or indirect jobs for more than 1,000,000 according to The FREEMAN or about 2,000,000 per Sun.Star account. To recall, Cebu City sold to the consortium 46 hectares of the SRP when Michael Rama was still mayor. The consortium which couldn’t start its project when Tomas Osmeña became our mayor is reportedly upbeat to make up for lost time. Supposing that The FREEMAN report was accurate, what kind of structure can the consortium build to accommodate 1,000,000 people? Now, if Sun.Star got the mayor’s figure correctly, how can the consortium house the 2,000,000 people it hopes to employ? It doesn’t seem to add up. I hate to think that the mayor, in preparing his “100 days report”, might have been given a wrong briefing.
Here is a little more mischievous tweet. The population of Cebu City is an estimated one million. Can we bring all city residents together in the entire SRP? Can we all be accommodated there in one setting?