We’d like to beg for the indulgence of our readers for the failure of this column to come out on this page yesterday. Our area was included in the coverage of a massive power outage yesterday morning reportedly due to a damaged main power line somewhere in Ulas going to Calinan district. The interruption lasted for about nine hours starting from about 5:30 early Sunday morning to around 1:40 in the afternoon of the same day.
Hence, we could not encode our piece, and when power came back it was too late for us to meet the deadline for the submission of opinion articles prescribed by the editors of this paper. Last Sunday’s power outage was the third in a row to hit our place since last Friday up to last Sunday. The previous 2 outages, we assumed, were due to strong winds with accompanying heavy rains.
And in last Sunday’s 8-hour 40 minute outage we dreamed towards dawn of that day that we were relocated to the Island Garden City of Samal where the people are complaining of long, almost daily power outages. Good thing that when we woke up we realized our residence was still on its site.
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There is this adage that says: “When it rains, it pours.” And in the past two years, our life seems to be the epitome of application of that saying.
Towards the end of the third quarter of last year we went under the knife to have a growth of some kind of an extension of our urinary bladder at the back and between our kidney and gall bladder. It hurt the family’s level of survival. The expenses, despite some help from relatives and true friends, drained whatever was in our pockets and the little savings we had over the years. By “drain” we mean hardly a penny was lefty for our disposal. The family however, did not incur even a single centavo debt in the hospital. And as we slowly recuperated financially and physically our family’s resolve allowed us to survive the daily rigors of existence.
But misfortune seems not yet through with the family. Only lately our wife experienced hard of breathing and easily gets tired. When we brought her to a doctor and tests were made including x-ray procedure, she was found out to have plenty of liquid in her lungs. And worst, a mass was seem on her mammary gland.
We have to confine her in the hospital for the draining of the liquid in her lungs, and unluckily she will also have to undergo operation to remove the growth found on her left breast.
Indeed the whammies are too much to bear and appears to be testing how far our family could go. Of course, everyone in us and our close relatives could only look up to the Almighty as the sole healer who could guide the doctors’ hands and buoys up the spirit of every member of our family.
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These insinuations of corruption in government projects emanating from both the camps of the emerging opposition, the Duterte family-led Partido Demokratiko ng Pilipinas, and the President Bongbong Marcos-led Bagong Pilipinas administration group, is getting to be amusing and disgusting to the core.
When the Bicol region provinces and cities were submerged (and still are) in water due to the recent typhoons the PDP, through VP Sara Duterte, immediately raised the question what happened to the President’s flood control project in the Bicol Region. Somehow, the “new” opposition believes that the two years that PBBM is in office is enough to plan and implement hugely-funded infrastructure projects like the ones intended to control flood from happening in the Bicol area.
Our take is that there may be flood control projects planned to be set up in the Bicol region but it could have been planned long before the Marcos, Jr.’s administration because knowing the history of the Philippine government in developing the right project and finding the necessary financial requirements plus the “politics” that serves as major barrier in the final approval of big ticket infrastructure, we can safely assume that the planned infrastructure in Bicol could have dated back to the time of one or two or even three to 4 previous Philippine Presidents including former President Rodrigo Duterte himself.
Then came the response of the PBBM group through its hired vloggers. They also question where the P57 billion or so infra project funds allocated to first District of Davao City Congressman Polong Duterte go. Somehow, the PBBM group insinuated that a huge portion of the multi-billion money could have included funds for flood control projects in Davao City. The national administration’s trolls want to know why the flood in Davao City continues to bedevil residents and businesses until now.
Honestly, we are not really aware whether the P57 billion allegedly allocated in the district of Congressman Polong really include funds for flood control projects. But we are witness to the massive improvements of roads in his district including lighting these roads with solar-powered lamps that virtually turns nights into days in streets where the solar light are installed.
But we too, are witness to the often visit of flood in the city even if strong rains fall only in just one hour. In other words, if there are indeed flood control projects funded by the P57 billion allocation, these are either uncompleted or substandard in construction and design.
We can only hope that those who believe that there are flood control projects initiated by the first district congressman can pinpoint to the people including us, where these projects are so we can validate the allegations of misdeeds by those who are tasked to implement the same.
And we also expect those who alleged of shenanigans by the government with regards to the Bicol Flood Control projects will do the same and not just make sweeping denunciations. That way the claim and counter-claim of deception could possibly be fair and justified to the public.
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