RAMIREZ
Mutilating an important part of skywalks in Cebu City just to prevent homeless families from making the structure their sanctuary for the night is a lethargic solution in preventing the homelessness.
The proposal to take off the roofs of the skywalks to prevent it from being used as refuge for the homeless at night is an admission that the city government failed miserably in its mandate of taking care of the homeless in any part of the city.
The move has been proven ineffective in preventing abuse of the structure because one of the few skywalks in the city built without a roof that’s located in front of Social Security System (SSS) building along Osmeña Boulevard suffered more maltreatment than those with roofs.
You seldom see pedestrians climbing up this structure in front of the SSS building, and if there is one, the person would surely retreat because the elevated pedestrian walk is littered with human waste among other things.
It may be true that no one is sleeping on the roofless skywalk near the SSS headquarters because they are afraid of the rain, but it is still being misused as an open toilet as evidenced by the presence of human waste in many parts of the walkway.
What is conclusive here is that skywalks whether roofless or not are in the state of misuse, and if one would not use it as a temporary sleeping quarter, it will still surely be abused and mishandled, as a toilet perhaps.
The proponents believed that taking down the roof of all the skywalks would solve the problem, undermining the resiliency of informal settlers who are capable of constructing makeshift roofs over their heads to keep them from the cold and rain.
Skywalks are generally white elephants because they have not been used for its main purpose. Pedestrians still take the risk of crossing the streets underneath the structure despite several accidents among pedestrians who were too lazy to climb the skywalk to keep them safe.
The proponents of the roofless skywalk should not worry about the night dwellers because it helped the government justify the construction of the structure that the public abhor using.
If some bright people in the Cebu City government is proposing to take down the roof to prevent night dwellers from using the skywalks as sleeping quarters, I suggest that they demolish the entire structure as well since the public is not using it as it is intended.
As yet, having the skywalks used as sleeping quarters is the only justification that the taxes of the people used to build the structure did not go to waste because it still has some usefulness for homeless residents of the city.
If the proponents would really get their wish to mutilate the skywalk, I suggest that they first oblige the use of the structure in order to get feedback from the public regarding the usefulness of the roof for the pedestrians.
Leave the roofs alone and craft a good program that will address the problem of homelessness in the city because taking down a part of a structure as a solution to a problem is like cutting a portion of the arm because it has some boils.
I hope that the city government would do what its counterpart in Mandaue City is doing.
That is fully enforcing traffic rules especially on jaywalking in order to make the proponents of the roofless skywalk understand that their proposal is a lazy solution to the problem of night dwellers.