By Danilo P. Padua, PhD

The road traffic in Baguio has gone berserk that a big company is now almost throwing its hat into the realm of decongestion scheme. For the love of the city?
The Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation is specifically targeting to decongest the Central Business District by proposing a no ride zone there.
The proposal involves the collection of PhP250.00 as a decongestion fee every time a vehicle enters the Baguio CBD. The idea supposed to be is to dissuade motorists going to the center, easing traffic and giving the city government additional income. It allows people, especially tourists a more leisurely and enjoyable walk around the area. This is also to say that visitors or promenaders in the area will be much safer as there will be a decidedly minimal risk of accidents along the way.
This idea though, teeters on the brink of absurdity. If the proposal is implemented, the moneyed class will just get in and out of the CBD and pay the fine. For somebody like me, I will think not only twice or thrice but at least 10x before going headlong into the district. It’s simply too expensive for me to do it. That means the rich ones will enjoy the city center with glee abandon. They will have it for themselves, although they may not have paid a single peso of their tax to the city.
Locals will pay their taxes so, the city center will be spruced always for the enjoyment of outsiders. Unfair of course. And yes, as to the tax payers? Sorry, get rich first. It will look like this: you make your yard as beautiful as possible, plant vegetables and fruits and when harvesting time comes, China will just come to do the harvesting. You can not do anything because he brings with him, a powerful water canon, in complete battle gear with equally powerful arms tucked somewhere in his vehicle. Sorry, just stay inside your house?
If the city is serious on decongesting or not allowing traffic at the CBD, just ban every vehicle that may come in, period. If the city decides to impose fines, maybe exorbitant ones, that means the city government considers its citizens second class.
Besides, if the proposal is accepted, where will the poor local residents park their cars? And how about the pay parking businesses within the CBD? Parking areas outside the city center are not that developed yet.
That is why, at this time, the proposed decongestion scheme is an absurdity.
One may say that the proposal is an ingenious way of collecting income with nary a capital input. Is this not akin to the much earlier illegally-declared collection of parking fees by a company in designated streets of Baguio?
Fortunately, the city council had not even started deliberating on the proposal. Even mayor Magalong was perplexed why the proposal was already in the open.
Chances are, the leak was intentional to see reactions of the people. Even without the benefit of a relevant survey, more people are already expressing their dissatisfaction over it.
o-o-o-o-o
Last Wednesday ( June 12,2024), I attended the first Huntahan Media Forum held at Quezon Memorial Circle. It was hosted by a private company, JCV Worldwide Trading, headed by Mr. Jimmy Vistar. The resource persons were Engr. Ed Guillen (NIA administrator ), Atty Argel Cabatbat Magsasaka Party List representative and Mr. Vistar himself.
Engr Guillen was a former mayor of Piddig, Ilocos Norte, who garnered the World Creation in Agriculture award because of his many successful agricultural programs done in his town. He was rumored to become the next agriculture secretary because of this. He was not interested.
Instead he accepted the offer as administrator of the National Irrigation administration. During the Huntahan, he detailed some of his plans including Convergence Irrigation Program. That is, irrigation water as we know now should not be only for irrigation but should become multipurpose, to address other needs for water.
Atty Argel Cabatbat does not believe in food security but he advocates for food sovereignty. He elaborated on this in his talk.
Mr. J. Vistar is the rice producer who sold rice at the DA main at PhP25.00/kg. He did it for 6 consecutive months last year. He is using a biofertilizer that allows improved rice yield but reduces production costs.
I hope to deal with these in future articles.**