Rising cost of maintenance

A reader called us up last week to complain about the sad state of many roads around Metro Cebu. The reader, who works for a pharmaceutical company, said that if he were driving his own car, he would already be dirt poor in terms of maintenance.

The reason why he asked to remain anonymous is that his company might take it against him that he seems to be racking up quite a bill in terms of maintaining his vehicle. He however added that if we don’t identify him, it would not be easy to trace since many in his profession are also racking up repair bills.

“The roads are so bad that my car’s suspension just could not take the beating,” he told us.

Well, this is a common occurrence especially after the rains. You can hardly drive a few kilometers without the bumps these days.

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The traffic situation in barangay Punta Princesa hasn’t improved much and the obvious reason are the vehicles that are parked on the side of the road.

The tricycles line up the side of Sabellano Street beside the Lourdes Parish Church, which further narrows the already narrow road.

There are also many tricycle drivers, who overtake the queue of vehicles during traffic and there seems nobody there to stop them from doing that.

The multicabs also hold up traffic when they stop just anywhere particularly in the area near the intersection of Sabellano and Lllamas.

Last week, we saw the traffic enforcer of the barangay running after a multicab driver, who just sped off after committing a violation. If this happens all the time, then traffic laws will never be respected in this area.

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There has been a lot of talk about the 50 centavos rollback in jeepney fares that has left many unhappy.

The complaint of course is that the amount does not seem substantial considering how much the prices of fuel have gone down.

The jeepney operators contend that the increase given to them a couple of months back was not even enough to cover the increase in their cost in terms of fuel and spare parts.

Their reluctance to rollback the fare has also irked most commuters. We were expecting our friends from the cause-oriented groups to raise hell about this, but they seem very quiet.

How about those lawyers, who pride themselves as the protector of the abused and downtrodden? Isn’t this matter of lowering the fares something that would be for the good of the people?

Well, maybe this doesn’t fall among the causes they support so let’s leave it to them if they want to tackle this or not.

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For your comments, complaints and suggestions please feel free to contact us at 2531276 or 2538613 local 237.

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