During the activity, the mayor launched two projects that were incidentally part of his agenda for a sustainable Cebu City. One is the Pasil playground which replaced the Pasil Fish Market that was destroyed in the October 15, 2013 earthquake.
The second is the Cebu City Medical Center whose first phase is said to be 30 percent complete according to the contractor. It was obvious that the mayor timed the announcement on the City Charter Day in which he parlayed Don Vicente Rama’s lobbying for Cebu’s cityhood into his own administration’s achievements.
Being the local chief executive, Rama certainly has that advantage, and while the political undertone of each project’s announcement doesn’t escape public attention, it does deserve public support regardless of one’s political persuasion.
The playground project, which could have been completed earlier but was delayed in order to maximize publicity in an election season, provides a useful venue for children of Barangay Pasil and nearby barangays to exercise and avoid being distracted by less desirable elements like drug peddlers.
There were supposed to be plans to expand the playground in order to include a sports facility, and if it’s feasible, why not support it? That said, it remains to be seen whether the barangay officials will have funds to maintain said facilities and not allow them to deteriorate.
The second, albeit more high profile project known as the new Cebu City Medical Center raises a lot more questions, not least of which is its viability in the event that there is a change of administration.
Rama isn’t exactly counting on that possibility from happening but still we want to know if the other camp, the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) is keen on continuing with the project or not.
After having practically dismantled the old CCMC, Rama’s predecessor Tomas Osmeña had been advocating for the devolution of healthcare services to the barangay health centers and to private hospitals.
He even suggested that the city government instead provide medical insurance coverage worth hundreds of thousands of pesos to indigent patients so they can be admitted to the best private hospitals offering the best services rather than spend additional funds to build a new city hospital.
Now that Rama made a big deal out of presenting actual construction work on the hospital’s first phase, would the BO-PK pursue this and if they do, would they scale down the work from the original proposed plans for the project in order to cut down on costs or will they drop it altogether?
These two projects may or may not be sustained depending on the election’s outcome, but it would be a waste not to continue and even improve them.