Mahiga Creek
Ihave criticized Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CCENRO) Chief Nida Cabrera once before for her handling of the Inayawan dump site problem, especially when, instead of opposing its reopening, she allowed herself to be party to Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s scheme, attempting to sanitize it. Now I will have to comment a bit on her Mahiga Creek project.
I have nothing against the Cebu City Government’s plan to rehabilitate Mahiga Creek, but the work must be real and substantial. Just because Cebu is hosting an international river summit does not mean we ride on the bandwagon with nothing much to show. Which is really what the opening of the park built near the river is about, even if it is adorned with “eco-bricks” and “eco-pavers.”
For me, a park would have been a good project to cap a successful river rehabilitation. I looked at the page 1 photo in SunStar Cebu, and what it clearly showed is that much still needs to be done in Mahiga Creek. The situation there now may be a bit of an improvement from the trash-filled days in that portion of the Mahiga Creek, but the river is far from being rehabilitated.
What I mean is that rehabilitation work for the river (I won’t call it a creek) can still do without the park. It should be the cake first before the icing, substance over form. The amount of work and resources spent on building the park could have been better spent in making the river itself look presentable. My worry is that this could be the difference between deep and skimming-the-surface work.
To be fair, the responsibility of Mahiga Creek is not only with the Cebu City Government but also with Mandaue City Government. In the past, former Cebu City mayor Michael Rama and former Mandaue City mayor Jonas Cortes and their respective subalterns had exchanged words even with just the clearing of the Mahiga banks of structures built by informal settlers.
The Mahiga Creek is another challenge for the leaderships of both Cebu City and Mandaue City. If they could work together in rehabilitating the river, so much the better. Pooling resources and creativity is always better than doing things alone. I don’t know, though, if Mandaue has a CCENRO counterpart.
Much of the talk before about the Mahiga Creek is on the matter of risk reduction, considering that some of the structures that tended to block the river are fragile. The other structures built by establishments tended to make the waterway narrow, increasing the power of the water rushing down from the mountains.
Meanwhile, I don’t think Cabrera can do anything substantial in Mahiga from now until the coming May 2019 elections. The focus now is to win votes and not lose them. And the clearing of the Mahiga Creek, which is an important component of its rehabilitation, needs a good dose of political will from the mayors of both Mandaue City and Cebu City.
Whoever between Luigi Quisumbing and Cortes will win in Mandaue and whoever between Osmeña and Edgardo Labella will win, I hope they will work together and acquire the political will to complete the rehabilitation of the Mahiga Creek.