Metro Manila's just too dirty

DEMAND AND SUPPLY

Metro Manila's just too dirty

By Boo Chanco

Happy New Year to everyone on this first working day of the year! For those of you who had balikbayan relatives to take around during the holiday season, I am sure you took it as an opportunity to go around as a tourist and see the city as a tourist would. I revisited Intramuros and Fort Santiago as my sister, her American husband, her New York-based son, wife and two boys joined the Carlos Celdran walking tour. They totally enjoyed it, even the young boys, age nine and 11.

The following day we were up early to catch the Sun Cruises Corregidor tour. I had not been to Corregidor in ages and I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of notable improvements. The sound and light show at the Malinta Tunnel gave a good feel of the significance of Corregidor and the sense of history we all need. The tour guide assigned to us was also very knowledgeable and witty and she made the visit pleasant, entertaining and informative.

It was another early start the next day for all of us as we went to Camiling, Tarlac to see the hometown of my late mother and my 91 year old aunt, an ex-nun we used to visit at St. Joseph’s College in Quezon City when I was growing up. Only three other aunts are still around out of the 14 siblings in my late mother’s family. The ancestral house had given way to a new construction with modern amenities. But the photos and the paintings of my grandmother who died at age 102 gave us, including the folks from New York, a good appreciation of our roots.

I didn’t go to all the places my nephew visited, like Culion, Coron and Puerto Princesa. I also didn’t join them in their Mount Pinatubo trek. But as they left the country last Friday evening, he and his family were unanimous in saying they enjoyed their two week visit because they really had fun. And they have plenty of pictures to prove that. The photos they posted on their Facebook wall got envious comments from their New York friends who saw just how beautiful our country is. The effort they took to trace family roots also got good reviews.

As for Metro Manila… they were very diplomatic about it but in so many words, they thought we could do a lot more about cleanliness. I felt that way too after walking around piles of garbage along General Luna, the main street of Intramuros. My sister, who is staying in a condo unit owned by my other sister near Timog in Quezon City was more direct about the abysmal state of garbage collection in the neighborhood. This sister of mine, a doctor, migrated to the US almost 50 years ago and she recalled a Manila that was cleaner and more orderly. I guess from her perspective, we have deteriorated through the years rather than progressed.

I can appreciate why she feels bad with what she saw. She saw really bad mounds of garbage in Aurora boulevard in Cubao with scavenger children picking from the piles. The garbage situation at Araneta Avenue just before Del Monte Avenue was worse… scattered so that a couple of lanes were unusable. I just assumed the garbage collectors were on holiday too.

At the SunCruises terminal near the Folk Arts Theater where we had to check in for the trip to Corregidor, the comfort room was just plain dirty and some urinals clogged. Yet we had to pay P10 to use the CR. The responsibility for maintaining the CR is probably with the Cultural Center people but Magsaysay Lines that operates the SunCruises should take responsibility for the CR used by their passengers. This is particularly important because many of the people we went to Corregidor with were either foreigners or balikbayans.

I wonder if this is the same Magsaysay Lines owned and managed by my friend Doris Magsaysay Ho. If it is, Doris should be patriotic enough to contribute to the tourism effort by making sure the tourist service she provides not only makes money for her but projects her country in the best possible light. On board the ferry itself, I am sure there are many more things Magsaysay Lines can do to improve sanitation and the visual impression the boat itself gives.

Local governments and private sector companies in the tourism industry must also do their share in promoting a good image of our country. That responsibility cannot be placed just on the Department of Tourism alone. The DOT cannot collect garbage in Intramuros or Cubao. The LGUs concerned ought to show more capability in maintaining cleanliness in their jurisdictions.

Our local governments spend big money on garbage collection but have little to show for it. Not only is a garbage free metropolis good for tourism, it is good for public health. My visiting nephew was impressed with how clean Puerto Princesa is. Mayor Hagedorn should probably give the other mayors a seminar on how to do it. Puerto Princesa, after all, is one of the largest cities around and if he can do it, other mayors have no excuse.

Then there is traffic. The reason the traffic we encountered going towards EDSA from NLEX was backed up for many kilometers at 11 in the evening because vendors have taken over half of EDSA in front of the Balintawak market. That wouldn’t have been allowed to happen if Bayani Fernando was still in command of MMDA. It seemed to me that MMDA took a holiday break and left the citizens to fend for themselves. I complained via Twitter and got no response from MMDA. I guess no one was around to check twitter messages too. This Tolentino who heads MMDA must show more leadership and not rest on the dubious laurel of being a P-Noy classmate.

I must also admit that we, the citizens, have to change our attitude towards the public space. I have seen a number of motorists on NLEX rolling down their car windows and throwing out trash. That lack of respect for public space… lack of responsibility for keeping public spaces clean is at the root of many of our problems with flooding and epidemics. Our streets, our rivers, our seas are dirty because we don’t take personal responsibility for keeping these clean.

It was embarrassing to explain to my guests why Manila Bay, where we boarded our ferry to Corregidor, is teeming with floating garbage and the “aroma” of the sea air not exactly pleasant. It was like that too at the Corregidor wharf where we docked. Even the tour guide had to apologize for the garbage in the beach and floating in the sea. It was not possible to steer our guests away from areas with garbage because garbage was all around. It certainly made us look like a people who live like pigs. We cannot use poverty as the excuse for the mess. Poor governance and public apathy are more like it.

I don’t know if the schools still teach their pupils to have civic consciousness. They did during my time but now, I am no longer sure. If we had a better sense of common good, of civic consciousness, I am sure life in our country wouldn’t be so unpleasant a struggle for many of us who are unable to escape the ugliness behind the walls of the rich enclaves. If we are more conscious of our obligations to the community, there wouldn’t be all these smoke belching vehicles on the road (causing all of us to inhale garbage) nor drivers who act as if they owned the road. We would be more considerate of each other and in the process, improve the overall quality of our lives.

It is the New Year so maybe we can all have a new year’s resolution to be more civic conscious… to be more mindful of our obligations to society. We owe it to ourselves. Ineptitude aside, our government can only do so much. The rest is up to each and every one of us. In the end, we deserve the kind of lives we live. A dog-eat-dog world where the only thing that matters is our family and our selves is not what a civilized society is all about.

Definitions

Lito Balquiedra sent this one.

Tension is when wife is pregnant!

Terror is when girlfriend is pregnant!

Horror is when both are pregnant!

Tragedy is when you are not responsible for both!

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. He is also on Twitter @boochanco