Creed for hospitality
BOOSTING domestic tourism was the president himself. In a Jan. 22 interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, President Benigno Aquino III said that he was looking forward to stepping down after 162 days and becoming again “free to be a tourist.”
Mr. Aquino said Filipinos fiestas were “some of the loudest and liveliest,” a reason why travelling around the Philippines is No. 1 on his list of priorities when he becomes again a private citizen.
The President praised the growth of tourism for putting “food on the table of our countrymen”. For every foreign tourist arriving in the country, a job is created. He added that tourism’s benefits cascade not only to entrepreneurs but also create a “multiplier effect on families” who can save or invest for the future.
Fallout
Tourism’ s mixed consequences for the community vary greatly from the rosy picture painted by the President, who admitted in the same interview that he generally had only two minutes to imbibe in the local scene during official visits.
On traditional and digital media, post-Sinulog discussions zeroed in on crowd control, with complaints raised against the official handling of garbage, traffic, street drinking, theft, sexual harassment, brawling and other areas that already bedeviled past fiestas.
Since the number and complexity of the problems can be predicted on the growth trends of the Sinulog, the public and the media call for authorities to undertake a postmortem evaluation and apply the lessons in anticipating and preventing the same problems from recurring or worsening.
From a million joining the grand parade in 2012, the official estimate was 3.2 million participants last Sunday. The tale of the numbers alone augurs the rising complexities and challenges of maintaining the peace and order of the crowd contained within the congested commercial areas and narrow roads and streets of uptown Cebu.
Sinulog Foundation Inc. (SFI) executive director Ricky Ballesteros himself said that “Cebu is getting smaller for the Sinulog,” re- ported Sun.Star Cebu’s Princess Dawn H. Felicitas on Jan. 22.
Foresight
So it is extremely disappointing that authorities’ plans for 2017 are focused on finding a new venue for the grand parade and constructing a new grandstand. Of paramount importance is to improve on the plan to maintain peace and order after the grand parade ends.
Since the Sinulog has grown to become a premier tourist attraction over the years, the vulnerability of public safety is heightened from early evening, when the crowds disperse after the fireworks display closes the grand parade, to dawn of the following day, when street revelers are still drinking and partying.
Even the street cleanup carried out by the City Hall and barangay teams was compromised by rowdy persons picking a fight, throwing and breaking liquor bottles, and throwing up.
The marked scarcity of police after the parade ends also coincided with the failure to implement the ban on street parties, announced by the SFI, Cebu City Government and the Cebu City Police Office. Police officials even defended their failure to arrest drunk revelers. Due to a “very festive mood,” persons who had too much to drink were “escorted” by officers to Kaohsiung buses.
However, these holding centers to enable the drunk to sleep off their “very festive mood” were not enough. These merrymakers mingled where the crowd, where, unless they violated City Ordinance 1929, they got away with any behavior, including mashing, taunting and harassing, with impunity. Only one reveler was arrested and brought to the police station for challenging a fellow reveler to a fight, reported Sun.Star Cebu.
Barely a week after Sinulog 2016 closed, Cebuanos and their leaders will again test their readiness to cope with the harvests of tourism during the hosting of the International Eucharistic Congress.
It is hoped that there will be more system and order in the hospitality we offer our visitors.