A tourist stop but for its street woes

Are the tricycle and garbage situations in Tarlac hopeless?

No matter how the government tries to field traffic enforcers, mobilize the police, alter routes and impose no parking zones, tricycle drivers always behave as though they are exempt from the regulations. And judging by how they blatantly thwart traffic regulations—overtaking, parking on a no-park zone, entering a one-way street right in front of traffic enforcers—it does seem that they truly are exempt. They litter, smoke and urinate everywhere. This just goes to show that they are oblivious not just of traffic rules and road courtesy, but even of acts of decency.

And what about the pollution problem? A priest newly arrived in Tarlac once commented that of all the places he had been assigned to, Tarlac City has the most expensive tricycle fare and dirtiest streets. I don’t blame him for saying that. I have just about given up going to our public market. A few months after it was opened, it

deteriorated into a state of mud, garbage and stench. Vendors

stubbornly persisted on crowding the alleyways; and after weeks of confiscating their goods to no avail, the authorities caved in to the rule of the mob.

In other places, people put their garbage out in front of their houses, neatly tied in plastic bags. Here, there are only garbage heaps everywhere. Once when I told a friend not to throw her

candy wrapper, she just scoffed and said, “We have to give something for the cleaners to do.” Shouldn’t one take care of one’s own garbage?

Rep. Rodante Marcoleta once wailed: “We are landlocked. We don’t even have a beach”—as if having a beach is the be-all and end-all in being a tourist spot. To which Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez knowingly replied: “Just because a place is not the one visited doesn’t mean it doesn’t have participation in tourism.” Tarlac is in the enviable position of being a center of roads that lead to other tourist destinations like Baguio and Subic. Presently because of the traffic situation and unsightly garbage, people groan when they pass through our province. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can give them a reason to stop and explore our province. There’s the Ninoy Aquino Museum which is world-class, the Monasterio de Tarlac on top of the mountains in San Jose and which holds a relic of the Holy Cross, the sprawling Tarlac Recreation Park and, of course, during Christmas, the Belinissimo. And lots more. We have a lot of interesting delicacies, cuisine and places to eat; our fiesta is one of the liveliest, the downtown is of interest with its quaint stores and, oh, if only the market were clean and the salespeople friendlier, and the tricycles didn’t charge out-of-towners exorbitant prices, and the streets were litter-free and well-maintained. With airports in the north (Ilocos) and south (Clark) of Tarlac, what’s to keep the province from being a tourist

destination?

—DITAS R. ROXAS,

[email protected]