A stretch of a road to a mountain barangay in Cebu City is so bad in its condition that it could be worse than what I experienced in going to a remote village of Boctol, Jagna, Bohol when I was very young. In that statement, try imagining the comparison in point of time, place and resources. I am talking of the road connecting barangays Agsungot and Mabini, here in Cebu City, and at present.
The Municipality of Jagna, in the province of Bohol is located far from the capital City of Tagbilaran. Its barangay of Boctol is a remote village. When I frequented that place in my youth, the road was Macadam. But, the steep and winding climb to the mountain was not dangerous because the officials of their local government unit, despite limited resources, took every effort to make it passable. Today, thanks again to their responsible leaders that road is now concrete and wide.
There is a junction called Jubaw in our mountains. One road leads to Barangay Guba and the other has either Mabini or Cambinocot for its destination. Last Thursday, I took the road towards Mabini. Almost immediately from that Jubaw junction, my old rickety transportation unit had to crawl if only to move. The holes are so deep and cavernous that they seemed to swallow my vehicle. On more passable ruts, there are jagged stones that I had literally to negotiate one after another. That short distance took me almost half an hour of a hellish experience of a travel.
Only the day before, I saw on television our honorable Representative Raul del Mar, talk of his 21 years in Congress. Without saying it, he could have really meant to include the years when his children substituted him in the meantime that the 3-term limit was reached. In that TV footage I saw, he was refuting the inclusion of his name in the "Napolist. " Actually, he did not have to say anything because in our system, not only is he entitled to the presumption of innocence, it is the burden of the prosecutor to prove the allegation of corruption.
Of course, the prime duty of lawmakers is to craft laws that benefit the country. Many legislators though pride themselves in having secured funds for this or that project. There could have been a law that an innovative Congressman del Mar, could have authored in any one of his 21 years as our representative or he could have sourced the necessary money to make that stretch of Agsungot-Mabini road better than that in Boctol, Jagna.
Before the PDAF became a subject matter of our people's indignation, we were told that congressmen had P70,000,000.00 every year for their pet projects. Let us assume that the said figure was available in the previous term of our congressman. So, in the 2010-2013, alone, Representative del Mar, had some P210,000,000.00 to fund projects at his direction. Why has he not arranged for an allocation that would make the travel in that area more comfortable?
Incidentally, along that stretch, a party-list representative had his base. I am referring to the honorable congressman Pastor Alcover Jr., whose roots are in Agsungot. He served our legislature for at least two terms. In the same manner that Congressman del Mar had P210,000,000.00 in the previous term, Hon. Alcover had such a huge sum for his "project delivery." True, as a partylist representative, he had the whole country to serve, yet he could have seen that right in front of his home barangay, the road is terribly damaged when compared to the condition of road to Boctol, Jagna, Bohol, fifty years ago!
I address this concern to our lawmaker because while there are visible road repair activities done in the mountain barangays by the city government of his honor Mayor Michael L. Rama, the mayor's capital funds are controlled by a city council whose majority members are not of his political color.
Our congressman should know that in this hot summer season, it may still be possible to travel on that dilapidated road. But when the rains come, the situation will be much worse. Can we expect anything from him?
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Email: aa.piramide@gmail.com