'BRGY chiefs can help vs reckless drivers.' - Headline on Monday.
"If the barangay captain would enforce his power....go to the people (PUV drivers) and tell them not to install loud music outlets in their jeepneys." -- Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, Monday.
With all respect Madame Mayor, asking a PUV driver to turn the music down or asking the barangay hall to 'enforce its power' achieves absolutely nothing and I'm speaking from personal experience.
Pioneer Subdivision and others in Buhangin poblacion are plagued with
habal-habals and trisikads serving the local high school whose drivers feel they have the right to disturb residents' peace at any time of day or night with their overloud 'sounds'.
Individual drivers were tackled first, asked to keep the noise down. No luck. Then, at our own expense, the residents of the subdivision installed 'Quiet please' road signs. No difference.
I've called on the barangay hall any number of times (They're sick of me), delivered letters of complaint, even provided photos of the worst offenders. The barangay hall wrings its hands and pleads impotence which you and I know is nonsense. The barangay hall does what it likes when it likes, the most obvious example being the sudden and unannounced closure of public roads for fiesta basketball games. How many times have you driven along a barangay road only to find it blocked by basketball hoops?
Sound systems mounted on single habal-habal machines or trisikads (With enormous bass boom boxes) are illegal but the noise will continue - as it is today - until the law summons up the courage to confiscate the drivers kit and,as the lyrics to a well-known song go, that'll be the day.
I'd invite anyone from the SP or the LTO to come and see and hear for themselves but, on second thoughts, that wouldn't work. There'd be the inevitable hoopla of a convoy and matching T-shirts and Klieg lights and the habal-habal drivers would be as good as gold.
A Sun.Star reader the other day posted a comment reminding me of one-time British premier Margaret Thatcher saying "Unenforced laws breeds contempt of the law."
How true.
Another headline, from last Friday, Representative Jane Castro commenting on PAL's pilot shortage -- 'Tap military pilots.'
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We're cruising at 30,000 feet at a speed of 600 kph and......whoa! Bandits at two-o-clock! Dive! Dive! Dive! Ack, ack, ack........"