How they fix roads in Fukuoka and Nagasaki

I just came from a five-day trip to the cities of Fukuoka and Nagasaki and let me tell you that the major difference between Cebu City and these Japanese cities is the serious lack of traffic. That’s because the Japanese have that unique culture of ensuring that their people are not delayed because of road problems by simply fixing what needs to be fixed. A case in point is that simple road in Cebu City the Banilad-Talamban road. I dare say that let a Japanese engineer solve that traffic problem and give him the funds to do so and I’ll tell you that problem is going to be solved!

For instance my favorite road which I call the parallel road to Escario would have been fixed by a Japanese engineer a long time ago. When we voted for President Rodrigo Duterte, I mistakenly thought that we finally voted for a man who cared about Cebu. Unfortunately, he put a man to head the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) named Mark Villar to bring fresh hope to infrastructure-starved Cebuanos. Yet, President Duterte is nearing his third year in office and Cebuanos still have traffic problems.

So the question is will the DPWH fix whatever needs to be fixed in Cebu in the next three years of the Duterte administration, or are we going to end up empty-handed, no different from the Aquino Regime? At this point, we can only hope that DPWH Secretary Villar will pay serious attention to our needs in Cebu City.

Speaking about the Banilad-Talamban stretch which Cebuanos consider the EDSA of Cebu, I dare say it is high time for us to put an elevated road way to stretch from the Ayala Center all the way to Talamban. Phase 2 should be from Talamban to Pit-os. In that way we would not only solve our traffic mess, but make Cebu City livable again! I dare say that this new infrastructure project should be supported by all political parties so that after the May elections we can look forward to the reality of this project.

I had a short talk with Nagasaki Prefecture Governor Hodo Nakamura and he told me that Japan wants to ensure its citizens of less problems when it comes to traffic. I told him that I was surprised to see new infrastructure between Fukuoka and Nagasaki that wasn’t there years ago, while in the Philippines we advertise our huge infrastructure program called “Build, build, build” but at the end of the year, many projects remain unfunded.

Mind you, Japan is a unitary form of government, just like the Philippines, but the Duterte administration is lobbying for a federal form of government. But it seems that in Japan, no matter how far you are from the main city of Tokyo, the Japanese engineers give the same kind of infrastructure quality of work even for projects so far from Tokyo. Here at home, quality work only happens close to the National Capital Region but the moment a DPWH project goes further away to a place like Mindanao you can bet that the quality of such projects will suffer greatly. This is the major difference between a Philippine project and a Japanese one!

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The Commission on Elections is planning to regulate social media campaigns during the elections, which makes me curious…what can the Comelec really do with millions of computers, not to mention millions of smartphones that would be used for election purposes? This is the problem for the new folks running things within Comelec; they probably think that they can do anything to control the social media networks.

With so many issues confronting Comelec, I’m sure that they would also include the social media networks. Perhaps the biggest threat to our politicians is fake news reports. This is something that is happening within social media networks, to which the ordinary citizen seems helpless in finding solutions. At this point, I would like to hear what the Comelec proposes to do or even come up with to punish the violators. But in the end the problem lies in the reality whether a social blogger is based in the Philippines or a neighboring country.

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