ROUGH CUTS| How else but callous and insincere

At the outset we would like to thank the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., Inc. (PLDT) for finally responding to our complaint about our telephone line at our residence in Talandang, Tugbok District.
Yes, after some two months of enduring an off-and-on operability of our telephone connection for six weeks and later a total conk out for two weeks, a technician was finally sent to our place. But before that we had been trying to reach the service department of the telecommunications firm to no avail. There were times in our call and that of our daughter who is working in a downtown Davao City establishment, that could get through until the last number that is pressed for the relaying of the problem.
Most often however, the number in what is now digitalized process of airing complaints is either busy or just keeps on ringing without anyone answering. Perhaps this is courtesy of the call center company contracted by PLDT for such purpose. But of course we do not expect the kind of treatment that we receive because we have been very religious in paying our monthly telephone bills.
We have to admit that our frustration was nearing the extreme and our patience was thinning. Our last recourse, though we did not like it, was to bring the problem out to the public’s attention through this space. We are certain that many among the clients of the telecommunications company were also suffering in silence from basically the same problem that we have.
We do not know whether it was coincidental or not that a day after our column item on PLDT came out last Tuesday, the company sent its technical personnel to our house the next day. We calmly narrated everything that we were complaining of. After a few minutes of tinkering on the receiver, the guy told us he did not find any defect in our unit. But when he tried again to contact, perhaps the technical unit of PLDT and nothing happened, the technician got hold of the Modem and there, after a minute or two of keenly assessing the Modem he found it defective and was the one preventing us from calling outside and be called by other parties.
In only about an hour and a half after changing our Modem, our telephone was back to life again. Now this number – (082) 237-2169 can be called without any hustle. We are hoping that the present operability of our landline will be for long and PLDT can introduce some improvements in its service, specifically in the manner with which it wants its subscribers to seek the service they need.
Again, we thank PLDT for finally responding to our long-standing complaint. As a utility company it is the firm’s responsibility to deal with the public especially its clients, responsibly.
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Talking of TIMELY RESPONSE to people’s complaints, apparently these two words are not in the vocabulary of the City Environment and Natural Resources Office or CENRO and its top officials. For the longest time we had been hammering in this space the still undistributed garbage bins to its strategic location in recipient barangays.
Shortly before the pandemic the local government of Davao City through the CENRO, delivered to several rural barangays a number of large garbage bins made out of hard plastic materials. We have no doubt that the intention of the city government is to enhance the sanitation of even far-flung barangays and villages by having the bins for the disposal of household garbage or even refuse from businesses located in the rural areas.
However, it’s been almost three years since the garbage bins delivery, the large plastic receptacles remain piled in some lonely corners of the recipient barangays’ covered courts or the barangay hall compounds.
We had been inquiring through this column whose responsibility it is to distribute the bins to where it should be. That is, whether the responsibility is still with the CENRO, or it has been delegated to the Barangay government.
Somehow, we are not getting any answer or even just a semblance of it until now. The piles of the bins are still untouched. In some barangays in Tugbok district that we have gone to, the piles are now covered with tall grasses.
How then should we interpret this inaction of the CENRO or even the Office of the City Mayor? How else but callousness and lack of sincerity in disposing the duties expected of the office and the officials.