The Kingdom of the Blind

Everywhere we drive in our island province, we are greeted with the most spectacular of substandard roadwork imaginable.  From a newly cemented road that starts to crack a few months after it was built to potholes and patchworks which make the most notorious rollercoasters feel lame.  We are made to suffer through this cycle over and over.

For some time now, I have been wondering why our roadways are of such substandard construction and why the people who undertake such tasks get away with it.  First, I thought it was because of the piss poor monitoring being done by the government agencies tasked to make sure that the work being done is spot on with the budget being requested.  After the news regarding the misuse of billions of bacon hit the grill, I was pretty convinced this was the number one culprit.  But when I came across a public works dump truck heading towards one of their projects, that’s when I realized there was more than one culprit.

I am pretty sure you have had your share of seeing this orange dilapidated dump truck filled with barrels of materials, and workers happily sitting topload as they head towards their assigned work areas for the day.  Did anyone stop to ask why this blatant violation of Article III, Section 32-b of Republic Act 4136 (Land Transportation and Traffic Code) has gone on for so long and no one has ever reprimanded them for it?  Section 32-b clearly states, “Carrying of passengers and freight on top of vehicles. - No person operating a motor vehicle shall allow any passenger to ride on the cover or top of such vehicles.”  So why are the people who work for the public works department doing this?  The answer is simple; because their boss allows them to do so.

Any person in their right frame of mind would not allow people to sit dangerously on top of a moving truck.  Secondly, any person who has the minimum intellect of a four-year-old child knows that allowing a person or persons to sit on top of a truck is a violation of the law.  Unfortunately, just like many of the people we vote into power, these so-called bosses possess none of the above.  All they care about is shaking each other’s hands thinking they did a good job today and deserve the paycheck they “earned” for the day.

So, how is this related to the road conditions?  Simple, the fact alone that they do not care about the safety of their people shows they don’t care about the safety of the general public.  They will certify a road completed and within standards even if it is way below standards acceptable to knock off factories in chinkland.  Do they care?  Not one bit.  They sleep well at nights on pillows filled with violet paper.  We, on the other hand, have to bear with their standards and mandatorily visit our mechanic from time to time to have our vehicle suspensions checked.

And that’s culprit number three; us.  We are content to accept what we are given and hum John and Paul’s hit, “Let It Be.”  We should change this attitude and be more vigilant.  Instead of using current technology to take a hundred “selfie” pics in the bathroom or record intimate moments that find themselves uploaded to popular video sharing sites, we should take pictures and videos of violations being committed by these “public servants” and post them on the various social networking sites.

We should no longer allow ourselves to live in the kingdom of the blind.  Since we all use our mobile phones while we’re driving anyway (even if we’re not allowed to), let’s be more vigilant and expose the piss-poor standards we have to live with…”pag may time!” @backseatdrivr