Huwebes, Hunyo 9, 2016

Why Dagupenos should envy Iloilo City

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

“Iloilo City has left Dagupan City by countless miles in progress,” I told last week my elementary classmate as I sipped my latte at Starbucks in Manduriao, Iloilo City by pointing the overlooking world class ten lanes complete with gardens and bicycle lanes' Benigno Aquino Avenue or commonly called the Diversion Road.
ILOILO CITY. Economically bursting  world class Benigno Aquino Avenue
 in Iloilo City. Look at the eight lanes highway, the two bicycle lanes and the
 gardens.

Just like the vision in Dagupan, three growth centers have been carved-out in Iloilo that became a linchpin for her economic mega growth that experts compared her now to Cebu and Manila.
Iloilo had done these economic leaps for the past several years while the anti-progress vice mayor and councilors in Dagupan procrastinate since 2014 to approve the revised Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) (the old CLUP was created, susmariosep, in 1978),” I told Mayor Belen Fernandez and Councilors Netu Tamayo, Jigs Seen, Alvin Coquiao, and Marcelino Fernandez, the last two kept nodding their heads in agreement, in a press conference called by the Mayor last Wednesday after the CLUP was approved by the City Council.
Its approval however was tainted by acrimonious debate, disparaging accusation,  and illegal adjournment by Vice Mayor Brian Lim and his three councilors’ allies.
I told them that Iloilo has new triangular economic hubs in Kapideco (Ayala Project) Estates, SM Properties, and the Megaworld Iloilo Business Park.
These billions of pesos investments draw thousands of Ilonggos as call center agents and other workers in the malls, townhouses, restaurants, hotels other companies there.
The call centers, according to Wikipidea, source-out their employees from the countless universities and colleges there.
DAGUPAN CITY. The almost business empty four lanes'
Jose de Venecia Highway Extension.

Workers in Dagupan City and the huge almost three million populated Pangasinan province have to find jobs in the congested Imperial Manila because leaders in Pangasinan, except Mayor Fernandez, could not decide how to provide employment for them.
I told the mayor that to enlighten our officials and people in the city about our being a “pariah” is to send somebody to Iloilo City to document and video it and show to her family owned widely subscribe cable TV the chutzpah made by leaders there for us to follow if not envy it.
“Para magising at maingit tayo sa katotohanan na because of parochial thinking naiwanan na tayo ng ibang siyudad,” I stressed.
Here are some excerpts from Wikipedia about the ballyhooed Iloilo City’s economic "miracle" :
“Underground provisions for public utilities such as electricity, water, telephone lines had been provided, thus finally removing the spaghetti wires along the stretch of Diversion Road. The project included additional three pedestrian overpasses, a footbridge across Dungon Creek, jogging and biking lanes, and a beautiful landscape”