I LIVED in Bonifacio St. when I was in law school. It was flood-prone then. I remember one particularly rainy day when the helper of our next-door neighbor was swept by flood into an uncovered manhole. Luckily for her, our other neighbors saw what happened and plucked her out of danger.
It is still flood-prone now, a long-time resident told me recently. She’s worried that floodwater will swamp the ground floor of her house when it rains heavily. It (the swamping) did not happen too often in the past but that was before they concreted Bonifacio St., raising it much higher than the ground where the houses stand.
What stoked her fears is the fact that while the road has been rebuilt, the drainage system or what passes for it has not been correspondingly improved. This is a practice that I have noticed in most road improvement projects. Pave the road now and install the culverts later.
The practice imposes more inconvenience than necessary on the commuting public because they are deprived of access through the road twice: First during the road concreting and then during the laying of the huge pipes. Why can’t they do both simultaneously?
Then, there is the matter of destroying a road that is still in good condition so that it can be repaired. I have seen this happen in T. Padilla Ext. They asphalted the road last year, only to drill holes on it a few months later because they wanted to cement it. I know because I hold office in the pier and pass through T. Padilla.
What intrigues me is that the road “improvement” and other public works projects usually take place in the months leading to an election. Is there some fund-raising involved in this Destroy and Rebuild program?
I hope that the administration of Mayor Edgardo Labella will be more assertive in requiring the Department of Public Works and Highways to coordinate with the city in the implementation of the DPWH’s projects. The road improvement may be a national undertaking but almost always, it is the city leadership that gets blamed if something goes wrong.
Speaking of blame, Labella got a lot of flak when a photo of men assisting in the clean-up of one of the city’s waterways went viral. The men were shown wading chest-deep in polluted waters and the critics were displeased that Labella would expose them to disease or at least infection.
The mayor, of course, did not order or even suggest to the men to soak in the murky water. He was not even present at the scene. But he still got the blame because he is the mayor. As a former senator once said, this is public service. Welcome to this world and its absurdities.
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To friends who, like retired Court of Appeals Justice Vicente Yap, have been wondering what happened to our radio program, “Frankahay Ta,” we offer our apologies. DyCM (1152khz) has been off the air for three days and will most like be off the air for the rest of the week because of technical difficulties. Our people are trying to address the problem and hopefully, we can resume broadcast next week.
Again, our apologies.