Whoever is the contractor in the ongoing (for too long already) improvement of the Maa-Magtuod-New Carmen-New Valencia Barangay road that is used as relief route from downtown Davao City going to or coming from Calinan should better re-think the strategy adopted in undertaking the job. The scheme being used by the contractor is making the road the route to perdition instead.
In our last two trips to the city proper from our rural residence in Talandang, Tugbok District we have observed that the workers excavate long stretches of one lane of the 2-lane road so they can prepare the stretch for the pouring of new concrete mixture. Road users like us, without doubt, could understand why.
The problem however, is that in the last two instances that we used the road in our trip to the downtown area the contractor failed to assign workers to direct vehicle traffic at both ends of the remaining lane passable.
In other words vehicle drivers have to decide by themselves whether they will risk getting stranded in the middle of the remaining passable lane because of vehicles also coming from the opposite direction.
It is common knowledge that in a single lane road the rest of the vehicles follow the one to first arrive in the ingress if the latter enters the single lane. In our case that is what we did because the vehicles following ours were already honking.
Unfortunately, our situation was also the same at the other end. Thus, the vehicle line that included ours met in the middle with the vehicles from the other end. What followed was bedlam. There was hardly any space to maneuver because the side of the remaining passable lane is a deep embankment. Any miscalculation by the driver could send his/her vehicle diving down the cliff.
We believe we were not the only one who had that observation. We are sure the rest of the drivers who were manning their vehicles in those particular days of our own experience could be gritting their teeth in anger for the risk they met and the delay in their appointment due to the traffic created by the road repair.
We do not know if it is asking too much from the contractor to please assign workers to direct vehicles entering the single-lane portion when to enter to avoid meeting the other vehicle line at the middle. And the contractor must provide each worker assigned at both ends with hand-held radio for better coordination in directing the vehicle flow.
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We wonder if Davao City Mayor Baste Duterte can find even just a little time to look into what is happening at the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO).
Yes, the city’s chief executive should take a little leave from his role in pitching for the anti-charter change position of his father the former President Rodrigo R. Duterte and look into why until now the CENRO has failed to have the garbage bins delivered to some rural barangays distributed in locations where it can be easily used by residents to dispose of their garbage.
The garbage bins, several hundreds of them, were purchased before the midterm elections of 2019. These were delivered to recipient rural barangays in the third, and possibly in the second districts shortly before the onset of the CoViD 19 pandemic. But it is almost five years hence, yet the bins are just piled in some inconspicuous corners of the recipient barangay center’s compound. Imagine, the garbage bins bought in hundreds of thousands of pesos – possibly even millions – of Davaoenos tax money just lying idle!
Meanwhile, residents in barangays concerned just dispose of their refuse here and there. At times throw their household wastes direct to the canals along the road!
If the mayor is really too busy and cannot afford to spare some of his time, maybe he can direct his city administrator, being the officer charged to run to city’s day-to-day operation, to call the attention of the CENRO head.
We believe it is a betrayal of the Davaoenos’ trust if the mayor continues to let some city resources, little its value may be, thrown down the drain by the ineptitude of some of his people.
