Christmas and New Year may have been over days ago, but don’t tell that to the beggars and street dwellers who have suddenly increase in Cebu City. They look at city residents and visitors as potential source of income.
Thus Fr. Carmelo Diola’s proposal for City Hall and the Archdiocese to work together “to find a lasting solution” to the problem of street dwellers, while welcome, doesn’t dovetail with whatever plans local officials have for these poorest of the poor.
Organizers of the International Eucharistic Congress (IEC) noted the increase in the number of street dwellers, who are not only drawn to the sight of visitors attending the annual Sinulog but also to the 15,000 foreign and local delegates attending the Catholic Church’s momentous event.
The event is a major one like the foreign and national delegates to last year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Metro Cebu. Only this time the delegates are Catholic faithful who are expected to be more sympathetic to the plight of the poor.
This sympathy the beggars and the street dwellers hope to take advantage of as delegates will no doubt be facing traffic congestion in heading to and from the Congress venue, their hotels or homes of their sponsors.
The knee-jerk reaction of some Cebu City officials would be to round them up and provide shelter to these dwellers for the one-week duration of the IEC. They would
either be sent back to their hometowns or gathered and tucked away somewhere.
This, Fr. Diola of the Dilaab Foundation, wants to address. Long-term solutions don’t come with magic wands that will make the problem disappear overnight.
The recurring phenomenon of urban migration points to a reality that Cebu City has to deal with, not hide away as an inconvenient blackeye when important visitors are around.
With all the wealth and resources of Cebu City, including the Archdiocese of Cebu, why is organized charity happening in bits and pieces and not a sustained, organized manner?
City Hall is scrambling to build a half-way house of mendicants before the Sinulog and IEC bring thousands of visitors around. (The annual Devotee City, a cluster of container vans for pilgrims coming for the Fiesta Senor is only open for three days.) Why isn’t there a year-round Good Samaritan Center for this purpose?
Why doesn’t Cebu City have even one soup kitchen where a hungry, homeless person can expect a modest meal to help him through a lean season whether or not he is a registered voter or a baptized Catholic?
The feeding programs scattered here and there are spot events of charity. With a more concerted effort, these efforts can be handled with more heart and effectiveness.