A wide swatch of residential and commercial areas in Calinan and some parts of Tugbok district including the barangay where our rural residence is located, suffered a 9 and a half hours power interruption. It started at shortly before 12 midnight of November 5 and continued until about 9:30 yesterday morning.
For our family it was a lonnnnnnnnnnng single whammy but had the effect of a triple devastating calamity. Of course we understood the circumstances behind the extended power outage. It was schedule from 12 midnight until 8 in the morning. Unfortunately, with so many areas slated for planned outages by the power distribution company we failed to see the announcement that included our barangay. Maybe the hardly readable letters in the announcement, or our “laziness” or lack of time to zoom in the inscriptions, or perhaps our own slowly deteriorating vision due to age could have contributed to our failure to anticipate the outage. Hence, we seem to be emotionally unprepared for its long duration and the impact it was to have in our household and the things we are regularly doing on a day-to-day basis.
On our small livelihood, the interruption rendered all the ingredients that were just placed in the freezer useless as these were in its liquid form yet when the shut-off started. So after almost ten hours, instead of expecting the liquid ingredients to become frozen they remained in its original form but were all ruined and by just seeing the state we can easily deduce that should it remain in the freezer and used to satisfy customers’ orders could mean danger to danger to their health. Thus, the decision was to discard all the 150 pouches of the liquid ingredients. And all those were worth a cool P12 thousand dumped down the drain.
Meanwhile, similar ingredients totaling 100 pouches that were earlier in their hard ice form melted back to its original liquid state. To re-freeze the same ingredients (mixture) again took another four hours. The consequence was lost sales opportunity for roughly 8 hours last Sunday, the usual day where business is brisk.
But again, having worked with a power utility, we clearly understood that there will always be circumstances that will result to service outages as faults in transmission lines (for power and telecommunications) and busted pipes (for water utilities) can happen anytime.
However, consumers like us cannot help but complain especially when such service disruption affects to a large extent their family’s livelihood – not much their convenience. **************************
Again we are calling the attention of Davao City Mayor Baste’ Duterte with regards to the hundreds of garbage bins delivered to several rural barangays in the third district, and possibly in the second district as well.
The large-size receptacles that are made of hard kind of plastic (possibly synthetic ones) are among those purchased in bulk by the city government before the onset of the CoViD 19 pandemic or some three years ago. The purpose is of course to meet the needs of rural barangay households and business establishments (mini, medium or large) for safe and sanitary disposal of their refuse.
And as we said in our earlier columns we were personal witness in the delivery of these waste bins in all the barangays located along the route to our farm residence in Talandang, Tugbok District. And our friends in other barangays had also informed us of the same deliveries in the rural villages they live shortly before the pandemic.
Well, we were extremely happy when this supposed service of ensuring sanitation in the rural communities was undertaken by the Davao City government through the City Environment and Natural Resources Office or CENRO. But alas, the provision of the bins was only up to the delivery stage. The distribution of the receptacles to the location where it is convenient for the people and establishments to dispose of their garbage has not been done until today, more than three years since the deliveries.
For now the garbage bins are just piled in some corners of barangay hall compounds and are slowly deteriorating. In fact in some barangays that we have gone to the bins piles are now hidden with grasses of the tall variety. Other bins are already losing covers.
As to why the waste receptacles have remained undistributed to strategic areas in the barangays, we have no idea. But what is clear is that a huge chunk of the city government’s resources has remained idle and slowly going to waste.
Is the city government so assured of its continued liquidity and of the claim that it has no outstanding debt that it can afford to just do away properties bought with people’s money?
We hope that one day soon the mayor, the swivel chair sitting executives of the CENRO and other city officials will realize that no matter how insignificant the cost of the garbage bins compared to the overall resources of the city these still form part of what the people had religiously paid the local government in order for it to pay its overhead and cost of developments that city residents are entitled from their government.
