IT’S BEEN over a year now, or perhaps a little less since the expansion work of the Catalunan Grande Road was done at the segment near the entrances of Skyline Subdivision and Pag-ibig Homes in the same barangay. However, a busted drainage pipe on one side has never been fixed by its contractor.
The sad thing about this mess is that the water coming out from the huge leak is not just from excess rain but also waste water coming from the households of the residents of the subdivisions thereat. And the smell in fact is terrible that passers-by have to squirm by the time they pass on that particular stretch of the road.
Of course we are not surprised if this disturbing smell will not be noticed by the barangay officials and even by Congressman Pulong who is residing at the upper end of the barangay. After all, every time they pass by the area they are inside their heavily sealed luxurious vehicles. Even body guards who also ride in SUVs or closed vehicles will not have the chance of sniffing the highly obnoxious smell. But the ordinary man who is most often taking the public transport such as PUJs, tricycles and the likes will have his nostrils full unless he is prepared with his hankies or tissue paper to cover his nose upon passing by that portion of the road.
To request the barangay officials, or even the congressman resident of the place, who are all known to be inside the comfort of their air conditioned vehicles most of the time when passing by the area to stop for a while and get out of their vehicle, is perhaps too much. But maybe by just lowering their vehicle’s window even for a minute or two will give them the rare chance of proving the ordinary man’s complaint right. In fact even if the smell is already tempered by the fact that most of the people in the barangay have already their noses used to the smell, the sight of the road never drying up despite hot days is already annoying.
Thus, through this space the affected residents and all other regular users of the road are strongly appealing to the sense of kindness to either the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) or the City Engineer’s Office (CEO) to call the attention of the project contractor, or for their agency to do something about the problem.
If the same is not fixed the soonest possible time then chances are, that part of the expansion project will go to naught. The water if not stopped from flowing could destroy sooner or later the foundation of the concrete slab. This could also be a possible source of illness because the water from the busted drainage pipe includes waste liquid from households and perhaps from the septic tanks that are surreptitiously connected to the main drainage pipe.
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Intriguingly, there is a problem of waste water leaking from a busted drain pipe in Catalunan Grande. However, it is also ironic that some portions, if not all of the barangay, are suffering from lack of water supply almost every day of the week for over a year now. And it is happening at this time of a pandemic raging in the entire country.
In fact during certain days last week the Davao City Water District (DCWD) was for several instances, sending to some areas of the barangay some water tankers. This we learned, because there was total absence of the precious liquid for days. Only air came out of the faucets inside households. So, to save the residents from dehydration and getting extremely unsanitary, the water firm had to send in the water tankers perhaps to assuage the people’s anger on the water utility’s failure to deliver the much needed liquid.
We had been asking the DCWD what is happening and what it is doing to address the problem which had lingered for quite some time already. Since early last year, we asked the same question and we still get the same answer until today. That is, that the DCWD is doing some improvement work on its distribution lines to provide better service to its customers especially those served by its facilities in Tugbok.
What kind of improvement work is being done considering the length of time that has already passed and seemingly the problem is far from over? Imagine water gone from the faucet as early as 8 o’clock in the morning and comes back only at about 1 in the afternoon.
And what is more annoying is that the four or five hours without water coming out of the household’s faucet is hardly noticeable in the monthly water bill. In other words, if the residents are not facetious enough to keep their faucets closed during water interruption hours, DCWD could be billing them, rightly or wrongly, the cost of air that flows out of the open faucet.
Why cannot DCWD tell the Catalunan Grande residents and those living in some other similarly situated areas honestly what really is the present problem of the water firm. We believe that if the agency will just be honest enough and humble to admit it service weaknesses, the people affected will understand, even if grudgingly.
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