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Thursday, August 28, 2003
120 PLDT lines damaged in accident
A TOTAL of 120 telephone lines of the Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Co. (PLDT) have been disconnected along R. Castillo St., Agdao, Davao City since Tuesday morning, adversely affecting business establishments.
Sun.Star Davao Publishing Office, which prints three publications daily, was virtually cut off from the rest of the world for 24 hours because of the incident except for a solitary Bayantel line had to be used alternately for voice calls, the Internet, and the facsimile machine.
When calling the affected telephone lines, one would get a persistent ringing instead of the usual elecronic voice saying the telephone is not available at the moment.
Thus, callers get the impression that no one is there to answer.
The public and affected customers were unaware of the reasons behind the temporary disconnection as PLDT management failed to issue any statements regarding the incident.
Telephone queries about the problem only gave vague answers such as a major line was cut off and they are working on it. The ones answering the phone, however, couldn't give any assurance when the telepone lines could be restored.
The lines were damaged when a cargo truck hit one of the PLDT posts along R. Castillo St. the other day. According to Gilberto Ruiz, PLDT Davao Exchange head, the problem was "man-made".
Ruiz, who was unaware of the problem when visited at his office Wednesday afternoon, had to call one of the data team members for clarification. He said they will dispatch the maintenance crew team to fix the lines even temporarily.
Sun.Star Davao maintains three PLDT lines aside from one line permanently connected to the internet.
Geraldine Ricarte, a data team member, said their crew has tried to fix the lines since Tuesday but due to the magnitude of the damage, the restoration took longer than expected.
He asked Ricarte to fix the lines "even temporarily, so they will have their communication back."
"Kahit pagdugtungin muna sa labas ng pipe, basta ma-connect lang," Ruiz instructed Ricarte. The phone lines were restored shortly after Ruiz gave his assurance.
Last December, PLDT retrenched more than 50 long distance telephone operators as management struggled to cut down operation costs. Ruiz denied maintenance crew was affected by the cutback.
"No, nobody was retrenched from the maintenance crew," he said in an interview at the lobby of PLDT Davao Exchange office. AFD
(August 28, 2003 issue)
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