Cebu’s sister city wants more collaboration
By Doris C. Bongcac
Cebu Daily News
First Posted 11:52:00 01/24/2008
CEBU CITY, Philippines - The mayor of Haarlemmermeer, Netherlands, yesterday told Cebu City that he was interested in collaborating to enhance the two cities’ ties.
Mayor Theo Weeterings, who spoke before the Cebu City Council yesterday, said he was especially interested in extending his city’s help to improve the management of the emergency room of the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC).
Weeterings, who has been mayor of Haarlemmermeer since April 2007, arrived in Cebu City last Tuesday to meet with Mayor Tomas Osmeña. It was the first time the mayors of the two “sister cities” met.
Weeterings told city councilors that he has been in contact with Osmeña since his arrival, reviewing the projects that the Haarlemmermeer City government helped implement in Cebu City over the past several years. He also said he wanted to start other joint projects.
“Something tells me that, in combination with the Eruf (Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation), we should be able to make lasting improvements in the (CCMC) emergency room management,” he said.
Weeterings is scheduled to depart Cebu on Feb. 1. But before he leaves, he told the councilors that he hoped to “see much, to talk to many of you and to discuss more ideas and proposals with you.”
Mayor Osmeña, in a separate interview, said Cebu City could make use of Haarlemmermeer’s expertise in flower growing to improve the local flower industry.
“I know that we can always get help from them. We have a flower industry that has never been exploited,” he said.
Osmeña said that The Netherlands has the best flower producers in the world. In Haarlemmermeer, there is even an annual flower celebration.
Weeterings said he would “do my best to work for a stable relationship between our two cities.”
Haarlemmermeer’s first contribution to Cebu City was an ambulance sent to Cebu in 1991, just a year after the Cebu City government and Eruf contacted the foreign city in 1990.
Recently, the Haarlemermeer fire department sent Eruf two emergency inspection vehicles.
“And next week, I have full confidence that Eruf will receive the national license to teach the Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support ambulance course,” he said.
Weeterings said that the course was taught by Haarlemmermeer emergency personnel. Once training is complete, the Phillippines and Hong Kong will be the only territories in Asia to have the license to teach the course, he said.
“Thus in the emergency rescue arena, Eruf lifts the Philippines into the same ranks as Europe and North America,” he said.
Weeterings said that just last month, he also welcomed into his city a 40-man delegation from Cebu City. The program was co-sponsored by The Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs, designed to let the delegation learn the social and political problems of neighboring Holland.
He said Haarlemmermeer also donated a garbage compactor and sponsored the education of the children of scavengers of Cebu City.
The city is also helping the city build a water system for barangay Tisa.
Agriculture experts from Haarlemmermeer also shared their expertise with agriculture students from the Cebu State College of Science and Technology.
In November 2007, they helped build a shadow-hall greenhouse in the school and brought some student interns from CSCST were brought to Holland for their internship, he said.
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