Unnecessary deaths

The recent deaths of two children—one in the city, the other in a far-flung town—were brutish, unnecessary and an eye-opener.

Cort Cabucos, 7, was playing in the rain one minute. The next, minute he slipped into a ditch, got carried off by rushing water from Monday’s downpour and drowned.

What was first reported as a creek in sitio Orel, barangay Banilad in Mandaue City turned out to be a riprapped open canal running through a populated neighborhood.

His playmates saw him in the water but were helpless to get him out.

While the Cebu City government fixates on removing 140 shanties along the Mahiga Creek—a much wider waterway—and gets caught in the political contests of who has a bleeding heart for the poor, day-to-day urban dangers of a messed-up sewage system continue to place others at risk.

There is no Drainage Master Plan guiding the efforts of Cebu City and Mandaue City in the patchwork of culverts, canals and storm drains that pass them off as a central sewage system.

Actually, we’ve seen 2006 studies of the Drainage Master Plan for which Cebu City paid a handsome sum to inventory creeks and drainage outlets, and recommend how to design a holistic, effective system. Mandaue City has its own as well.

But are these being referred to at all? We ask because city officials don’t show much familiarity with the engineering studies nor are they turning to experts.

Blaming the previous administration for sitting on the studies because their recommendations called for multimillion-peso spending is a tired and futile exercise. It’s what we achieve today that defines our future.

Metro cities of Cebu deserve proper urban planning. Looking forward, big changes are needed in infrastructure and the way communities are built around danger zones.

The second death, a tabloid screamer, involves an act of cannibalism by a doting uncle in the town of Tabuelan, northern Cebu. While neighbors insist Efren Matedios loved his niece, he took a knife and disemboweled her. He said he was “helping” her from transforming into a “manananggal” or witch. That allegedly explains his decision to eat her vital organs with a helping of salt.

Psychotic behavior, coupled with a culture of superstition, leaves any child in the barrios vulnerable to wild attacks like this.

Fortunately, Tabuelan police immediately arrested him. There will be justice meted in this sorry child killing.

In the case of Cort’s drowning in a Mandaue City canal, the death goes on record as an accident. There’s no culprit to be caught, but social justice requires city officials to ask how they can prevent a similar unnecessary death.