IT’S the spaghetti of the undesirable kind—those snarl of cables hanging over the heads of the metro’s denizens. When one goes past any glamorized drone’s view of this “creative” city that boasts of its airport’s excellent architecture, it’s easy to get frustrated next by the coiling, sagging eyesores that are the cities’ utility lines hanging grotesquely.
Not just eyesores, but Cebu City Councilor Antonio Cuenco calls it “imminent danger” in his privilege speech Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020, when he reiterated the call for utility firms to rid the city of these dangling “spaghetti wires.”
City Ordinance (CO) 1894, which was approved on April 25, 2001 yet, required all public utility firms to transfer their overhead cables underground. The medium objective was for the firms to install the underground lines five years after the approval of the law, while the long-term is the mandatory grounding of all lines within 10 years after the approval of the ordinance.
The 10-year mark had lapsed in 2012, but implementation of the ordinance’s objectives remain wanting.
It was only in 2013, a year after the 10-year mark that the Visayan Electric Co. started transferring its overhead cables underground. It finished its 650-meter Phase 1A, which covered Capitol-Fuente Osmeña Circle, was completed in 2015. Phase 1B, the Osmeña Blvd.-P. Del Rosario St. stretch, in 2017. Phase 2, covering corner P. del Rosario St. to Osmeña Blvd., saw completion in 2016. Those works only cover the power distribution firm’s cables.
It’s now 2020, or eight years since the local law’s ultimatum, and there’s a whole stretch from Gen. Maxilom Ave. to corner Gen. Maxilom Ave., corner D. Jakosalem St., which is part of Phase 5 that is yet to be worked on. Phase 6 will cover Gen. Maxilom Ave., corner D. Jakosalem near the Iglesia ni Cristo church, to F. Ramos St.
It must be noted that CO 1894 penalizes the president and/or general manager of the company that violates its provisions. Cuenco brought it up recently, and again we take note of the firm’s lackadaisical compliance to the ordinance. To this day, these spaghetti wires remain a fact of life that the city’s denizens hardly even notice them, except on bad days when they knock the daylights out of a random thing or pedestrian. But they’re one Damocles sword, regardless if citizens go about their day oblivious of them.
In the past city administration, we were made to make do with the poor deal of having these cables color-coded for easy identification, just so utility firms can fix their tangled wires immediately. Still, it does not solve the problem of these cables being an “imminent danger.”
The City Government, reports say, is currently in the works to hire a private firm to oversee the installation of subterranean pipes within six months. The city can not be held hostage by any excuse that there is “lack of technology and coordination” among utility firms.
The law is the law and the firms were given enough lead time, 10 years at that, to work on the cables. It must be high time to crack the whip.