Does anyone has plans for the Banawa Road?

Today is a special red-letter day for me because we are celebrating in a very simple way 16-years that we have continuously been showing to our Cebuano audience our Talkshow, Straight from the Sky. Yes, it was on March 27, 2000 when Straight from the Sky came out of SkyCable with then newly-appointed Department of Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas.

Yes, I was a believer in Mar Roxas until he agreed to give way to President Benigno “PNoy” Aquino III whom I found to be of lesser character and leadership than Mar Roxas. But after the Yolanda incident, and the faux pas at the Metro Rail Transit, I was totally convinced that Mar Roxas should not be elected as the next president. Anyway, enough of Mar Roxas.

Today we celebrate without any fanfare our 16th anniversary as the longest talkshow in Cebu, and I can probably boast from south of Manila. To date, we have recorded our 840th show and that’s a lot of interviews with only 10 count ‘em 10 replays. We often have to do replays because of certain technical problems or if the guest doesn’t arrive for the interview. These are thing beyond our control.

So tonight as usual, we do not have any interviews for you, but what we have is a collage of video shoots of previous shows pieced together by my director, editor, and cameraman, Albert Dajab just to bring you what we have done in the past years and beyond. So our 840th episode or Anniversary Show on SkyCable’s channel 61 will be at 8:00PM with replays on Wednesday and Saturday in the same time. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9:00PM tonight and at 7:00AM and 9:00PM respectively on Wednesday and Friday.

*** Last Wednesday evening, I joined a retreat at the St. John’s Priory in Banawa Hills, all the way up to Saturday’s night Easter vigil. But we stayed at the Jesuit Retreat House, which is close by. In between is the Tanchan Celestial Garden, which has become so known for their life-sized stations of the cross that a great multitude of Cebuanos go up to Banawa Hills on Holy Thursday and Good Friday.

The problem with this place is the road which is very narrow, which you can hardly call a two-lane road. A huge portion of it is still unpaved, because I heard that it is owned by my good friend, former Cebu City Councilor Gabriel “Gabby” Leyson. Last Good Friday at 4:00PM, we took our vehicle for the short ride from St. John’s Priory back to the Jesuit Retreat House. What used to be a three-minute travel became a 45-minute trip because of the multitude of people, many of them on board “habal-habals” trying to go down to the main road, while another bunch also on board habalhabals tried going up to the Celestial Gardens.

What I saw was disorganized chaos. Thankfully, there was no stampede otherwise; it would have been a disaster! There were uniformed policemen there, but apparently, they could not control the huge throng of people trying to outmaneuver each other. After 30minutes of standstill, things started to move because a SWAT officer started to manage the traffic and people obeyed this well-armed officer.

What complicated matters were the food vendors that practically grabbed the sides of the street. Nope, there are no sidewalks there. One vendor even had a Coca-Cola refrigerator, which made me wonder whether Veco noticed this. Mind you, this area in Banawa Hills is fast becoming a housing community, yet the City of Cebu has not even attempted to expropriate the road in order to widen it. Sure Holy Week comes only once a year, but with hundreds of thousands of people flocking there every year, I would like to believe that the City of Cebu must plan something in that area.

With the election campaign for local officials finally underway today, we would like to hear from both sides what their plans are for Banawa in the next three years. Perhaps one major thing that city officials can do is, find a new exit route from the Celestial Gardens, back to the main road. This way, they do not really have to widen that road, (although they ought to pave it with concrete or asphalt) but make it a one-way road going up to Celestial Gardens and if they do find an exit route, use that route to bring back the multitude of people back to the main road in Banawa.

While I won’t argue with anyone that this road may not be a priority for the local government, however it does become a major headache during Holy Week. So if anyone has solutions, please let us know what it is. In the meantime, I also would like to know from both the Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan party and Team Rama if finally they would build that parallel road to Escario that I have batting for in the last 10-years.

For email responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mozcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.