WE SEEM to have gotten a number of misfortunes in this month of March, 2024.
First we got the shock of our life when we learned middle of last week that we have a leaking water connection inside our house compound. For a period of one month, we were billed over P32 thousand.
Also last week, we read a notice of water service interruption that was to be implemented last Saturday, Sept. 16, from 9 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. Since we have storage containers with limited capacity the volume of water we were able to store was barely good for a day’s use.
Unfortunately, the water did not come back to our faucets as scheduled. So we ended failing to wash everything that needed to be washed as early as Saturday evening. The water service was restored in our place at roughly 8 in the morning of Sunday.
Then, on the same Saturday night power was off for about 30 or over minutes. That added up to the problem considering that not only there was no water but also the members of the household had to grope their way to wherever part of the house to do something. We could only thank the candles we received as Christmas present last December. They made our lives a little comfortable in the middle of the pitch darkness.
Toward midnight, we read a post on Facebook that the sudden power outage was necessary to extricate the primary power lines from the hold of a fallen bamboo groove after it was blown down by strong winds.
Indeed, those were not just a double-whammy but a triple.
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Whatever happened to the law creating the Metropolitan Davao Development Authority (MDDA)? The law was crafted through a bill authored with so much labor and dedication by Davao City’s third district Congressman Isidro Ungab. After its final version was approved by the joint Lower House and Senate body, the bill was smooth sailing to Malacanang for the signature of the President.
The law would have been in effect a long time ago after it was signed by the President. But suddenly the MDDA law was stalled after a prospective member local government unit questioned the legality of the same in the Supreme Court.
It has been almost a year since tne Constitutionality issue was raised to the higest court but the latter still has to rule on it.
We can only imagine the frustration of Congressman Ungab knowing how he had labored on the crafting of the bill and defending it in the Lower House where many of its members normally put the author to a roast if the bills are of local application.
Then he had to defend his bill in the Bicameral Committee of both the Senate and the House to ensure that any question of harmonizing the bill is settled before sending the same to Malacanang for the President’s signature.
Congressman Ungab may not have expected that the real opposition to his bill was just lurking from among those who he expects to be fully behind him.
Yes, the Province of Davao del Sur came out to be the nemesis of the law which would have institutionalize the harmonization of the development plans of each local government member of the MDDA.
Now the situation is back to status quo. Yes, the local governments in the Davao Region are talking through the Regional Development Council. But it is clear that with the recent disaster incidents that hit some Davao areas, it is clear that the development plan is far from harmonized and coordinated.
Meaning, “to each his own” is still the name of the game.
