I fully agree, DPWH should be investigated

My son, PAL pilot JV Avila just toured Samar reaching as far away as Borongan, Guiuan, and he took photos of the famous returned bells of Balangiga. He asked me after he got home why the roads in Samar and Leyte were well-cemented and very wide. It seems that we in Cebu are being left behind. I really had no proper answer for him, but years ago, I already toured the roads he just went through and they were already cemented.

At this point, for me it is crystal clear that the officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) simply do not listen to reason. My case in point is my pet peeve, the parallel road to Escario Street, which would have solved our traffic problem before it existed because I thought of this back in 2000 even before there was traffic in Escario Street but no one in DPWH cared to listen. Today, this road is supposedly finally funded, but still there are no signs that DPWH likes this project simply because it did not come from them but from me. Unfortunately, DPWH doesn’t even have any alternative to what I proposed.

Anyway, I just read the column of my good friend Atty. Elias Espinoza who asked to probe the DPWH. He wrote: “So the cat is out of the bag. The cause of the waist-deep rainwater in Baranagy Mambaling, Cebu City and its neighboring barangays when tropical storm Liwayway hit the country on Sept. 3 was the lack of drainage when the underpass in Mambaling was constructed. No less than underpass project engineer Roy de la Cruz of the Department of Public Works and Highways admitted this before the press.” Honestly this was a total surprise for me to read that a DPWH official publicly admitted this to the media.

Espinoza added “That the (DPWH proceeded with the work on the underpass even before the road-right-of-way could be acquired from the landowners and without working on the drainage system is simply unacceptable. This only shows that DPWH, which has the responsibility over the project, failed to perform its job.”

Actually at this point, many Cebuanos still believe in our proposed shift into a federal form of government so we can actually put people from Cebu who knows where the roads should lead to. Just to remind our readers that more than 25 years ago, the local Bohol media reported a DPWH bridge construction in the Loboc River which would have passed in front of the Loboc Church which was separate from its belfry. But somehow DPWH engineers didn’t care that the Bohol media was up in arms against the DPWH, so we in the Cebu media were asked for our support and gave it to them. I wrote a column entitled “The Bridge of the River Why?”

This publicity put a halt to the bridge construction. Today, the unfinished bridge still stands in Loboc River. And the thousands of tourists who go on the Loboc River cruise ask why this bridge was erected in a very wrong place. I call that unfinished bridge a monument to the stupidity of DPWH. Today, that stupidity remains with DPWH. I mean how could they construct an underpass without installing drainage? I fully agree with Atty. Espinoza that DPWH officials should be investigated for constructing that underpass without any drainage.

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We read in The Philippine STAR that the Philippine National Police has sought out the Interpol to help arrest self-exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison in Utrecht, Netherlands. PNP chief Police General Oscar Albayalde said that they are coordinating with the Interpol for the issuance of a “red notice” for Sison who is facing murder charges over the Inopacan massacre in Leyte.

Albayalde also said that the PNP is coordinating with the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime to make representations with the international police to start the process against Sison. A red notice alerts police organizations nationwide about internationally wanted fugitives. As Abayalde pointed out, “Joma Sison continues to exercise command and control of the New People’s Army, the military arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines under the umbrella of the National Democratic Front that is waging a terrorist campaign in some parts of the Philippines.” Let’s see if the European Union would help stop the communist menace in the Philippines from being waged inside the EU.