I do not know if there is a corresponding effort by this administration of his Honor Cebu City Mayor Michael L. Rama, in repairing the roads in the south district leading towards the mountain barangays there. My wanderings have not brought me to that part of the city lately, so I am incompetent to speak of infrastructure projects in the south. But, I am aware that in the north district, the concreting of a lengthy stretch of road in Barangay Binaliw is ongoing. In fact, every now and then, I write, in this column, my observations on which part of the north district mountain barangays are getting their share of concrete roads. I have reason to imagine that sooner than later, the link to distant Barangay Adlaon traversing several villages may be entirely paved with concrete.
Of course, I assume that the city leadership is rather fair in distributing projects. More than being a resident of the south district, the mayor is a city official whose mandate comes by the voters of the north and south districts. On such assumption, there could be more or less equal length of road concreting in these two districts.
To be sure, it is in this administration of Mayor Rama that the intense concreting project in the mountains is most observable. I wrote about this more than three years ago and I am comfortable to print it here again. The mayor should get some credit for this and if there is any detractor who does not believe me, I can bring him to such a far village as Paril on Saturdays where his seeing the long stretches of concrete roads may lead him into believing what I am saying.
The beneficial effects of these infrastructure projects are obvious. But, just the same, allow me to enumerate some. 1. Travel time is definitely reduced. It used to take us more than an hour to reach Barangay Guba from Talamban on board public utility jeepneys running on unpaved roads. 2. Farm products are fresh when they reach Carbon Market. Necessarily, the value is higher for the producer. 3. A transportation unit that runs on concrete road is less problematic compared to one that jars and slips while traversing on a street full of potholes.
Having said that, I wish the mayor should watch, in person, an ongoing concreting of a road. Let him visit Binaliw. For one, he will find out that the previous asphalt over-lay is being scraped, as it should be. But, the mayor will not notice any effort to level the terrain. The contractors simply spread gravel where there was asphalt and no matter how many times the road-rollers try to compact the gravel, the resulting terrain is still not level. The previous contours remain even when concreted already.
The mayor will also agree with me that our mountain roads are narrow. They have always been since when I served the city, more than two decades ago. That is why it is difficult for two vehicles coming opposite directions to meet. To clear each other, such vehicles have to slow down almost to a crawl. When the mayor visits the Binaliw concreting project, he will also realize that cement is poured on the same width that the road had. There is no attempt to widen it. After the concreting is done, the road will still be narrow. Yes, a concrete but narrow road.
I am certain that when the mayor validates what we are saying, he will agree that the kind of repair he is presently doing will only produce the kind of road that will be good for the Cebuanos only (emphasis, mine) in the next few years. Well, I might have been seeing much tv shows featuring well paved highways in the mountains of Europe that I have this tendency to compare such avenues to the mountain roads we have. Even then, the mayor must ask his engineers to go back to the drawing boards for them to plan our mountain roads to approximate the ideal highways that we are wont to see from the movies. Yes, we Cebuanos appreciate the efforts you are doing now Mayor but, understand that we deserve wider roads that are made safer by constructing them without abrupt changes in elevations.