THE other day we had some customer-bikers dropping by our newly-opened cold and hot shop inside our rural house compound in Talandang, Tugbok District, Davao City. One of them was the mother of a classmate of our grandson at SPED Bangkal. The classmate was also there with his mother. From their reaction after eating our hot chocolate which we generate from our own little farm, and the puto maya and suman they ordered, we can sense that they enjoy the experience. Each one was doing the thumb up sign to the classmate of our grandson.
Of course what made our heart expand was when the group verbally manifested their liking of the products we served them. But in due time we saw some of them moving from one spot on our ground to another. They were actually searching for a signal so they could communicate with some of their companions who were in the second wave of bikers along the route passing our place.
So, we have to honestly tell them that the absence of telecommunications signals specifically in our vicinity is one drawback to our just opened business. Yes, we have the amenities of internet connection, wide fidelity (WiFi), landline telephone, an e-mail system. All these are at our fingertips except for telecommunications signal for cellular phone callers. Our house location, according to some friends who are working with communications firms, our place and its immediate vicinity are “dead spots. But some barangays surrounding ours have the fortune of having signals from the country’s existing telecommunication providers.
With all this seeming isolation we are pinning our hope for a cellular phone signal from a new communications company touted as a rising competitor to the top two firms now dominating the industry in the Philippines. We are referring to the DITO Telecommunity, a Dennis Uy-led newbie in the telecommunications business that is banding around its 5G speed and clarity, and its relatively competitive cost to the people.
We do not know how true that its tower construction activity in Davao City is supposed to be in full blast as early as last year. First it was reported to have been slowed down by the onset of the CoViD 19 pandemic. But of late, there are insinuations certain influential personalities are dipping their hands into the DITO operations. True or not, as we said, we have no idea. But what is clear is that the company now falls short of its commitment time frame for a full roll-out it had given the government when it applied for its franchise.
We observe however, that as of now, the Uy-led consortium is doing everything to confront or meet head-on the problems it is meeting along the way including the one with that of the alleged influential persons.
Our fervent hope therefore is for DITO Telecommunity to extricate itself from whatever quagmire it has fallen and proceed with its tower construction project. Hopefully, this can be done in the soonest possible time. By then, we are optimistic that our place in the rural area, though barely 31 kilometers away from downtown Davao City, will finally be accessible by cellular telephone gadget.
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Here is one innovative project of the local government of Davao City launched a few years ago. That is the provision of garbage bins even in some remote barangays of the city just so the waste segregation program of the city can be effectively implemented.
But from our own monitoring in the barangay where we have our rural residence, we are starting to entertain the idea that the City Environment and Natural Resources Office or City ENRO is letting it go to naught. Yes, several barangays are recipients of the garbage bins. These were distributed sometime late 2019. Barangays Biao Escuela, Talandang and their surrounding villages in the third district were given a good number of the bins. But, it’s almost two years since the delivery, yet these have remained stocked in the compound of barangay halls and have not been moved to assigned strategic locations.
And there seems a major disconnect in this situation. We have noticed that in the more than a year that we are virtually isolated in our rural residence in one of these barangays, there appears to be no single garbage truck going to any of these villages to haul garbage. May be it is because there are no garbage bins placed along the road. So, garbage collectors might be thinking that having trips there would be a losing proposition considering that most of the hauler trucks are on per trip basis. So, what then are those garbage bins for if these are not placed in strategic areas and used by the people in the community? And what would the fully loaded garbage bins make of the villages if these are used by the people but the refuse are not collected by the CENRO-contracted trucks?
We are fervently hoping that this issue or complaints of rural barangay people will reach the knowledge of City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio. After all, it is her consuming desire to perpetuate the honor of having Davao among the most livable cities in the country, if not the world over.
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