Can anyone shutdown a national road?
For our special presentation on our Talkshow in Straight from the Sky we bring you one more another update with the Visayan Electric Company which has been silently working to improve their services to their subscribers in Cebu. For instance, now you can even pay your electric bills in many stores like Seven-Eleven, making it easier and convenient for clients so that they would never miss paying their bills on time. And yes, finally they are going full throttle on their “Pre-Paid” power program, something that we discussed in this show years ago and today it has become a reality.
With us tonight is my dear friend, Mr. Anton Perdices who just came back from a short stint in Harvard University for further studies. He is currently the Chief Operating Officer of VECO. One of the good things he has been telling us about what VECO has been doing especially along the Sinulog route is that they are now putting underground those ugly spaghetti wires hanging so ugly on our main thoroughfares. If VECO doesn’t just stop in the Sinulog route, in a decade, Cebu City would lose one of the reasons why we are called a 3rd world country.
So watch this very interesting show on what VECO has been doing these days on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00PM with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9:00PM tonight and at 7:00AM and 9:00PM on Wednesday and Friday.
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There is a question that a lot of people have been asking me: can anyone – especially a private person – close a national road? That question came up because if you did not notice, that part of the Banilad-Talamban Road, which leads to the Cebu Memorial Park (Cempark) which was renamed Jack Panis St. has recently been closed by the lot owners who apparently won their legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court.
But remember, all the members of the Supreme Court do not live here and therefore they most probably decided on this case based on what was presented to them without looking at the consequences of their decision. So again I would like to ask whether anyone can shut down a national road and divert this road as they please.
For the record, most Cebuanos today who are now 40-years old would never remember that the road leading to Cempark was the original road. Most people believe that the main road that goes straight from the Cebu Country Club to the University of Cebu campus has always been the Banilad-Talamban Road. But to us born in the 1950’s or 1960’s the road to Cempark is the original national road to Talamban because the tip of old Lahug Runway ends there.
For the record, I am not questioning the decision of the Supreme Court. I am merely presenting this question especially to the Department of Public Works and Highways, the agency handling our national roads. I am sure that the lot owners must has demanded payment for that road lot from DPWH and I am sure they are not willing to pay for that road. In fact that lot owners offered a diversion access to Cempark for free so that their property would become contiguous. But doing so creates another intersection that can only worsen traffic in an area considered to be worst. I would like to believe that DPWH officials here should fight to keep this national road intact.
Incidentally in the 1950’s at the height of the Osmeña-Durano political rift (these politicians are friends now) one of the Durano’s living along Juana Osmeña St. closed the road because they have title to it. Now even in those olden days, Juana Osmeña St. was already considered the busiest secondary road in Cebu City by virtue of the fact that it is one of the roads going to the Redemptorist Church.
I really have no recollection how the road row was resolved as I was just too young at that time, but somehow this road was kept open even if you could go to Redemptorist Church using other roads. Maybe the DPWH should look at how the Osmeña’s and the Durano’s fixed that problem.
This is really the major problem plaguing the DPWH these days. There are many people whose properties were taken over by the DPWH for road use and yet they never care to pay for the use of these roads. I should know as my family’s property crosses the entire stretch of Mango (Gen. Maxilom) Ave. and five years ago, a high official of DPWH wanted to pay us for that road. But there was a catch - someone high in their organization could profit handsomely if we agreed to do so.
So the family decided to keep things as it is. As what was headlined only last Saturday in The Freeman, “Bribes frequent in Metro Cebu.” Well, with the Aquino regime in its last few months, I guarantee you these crooked bureaucrats will milk you for everything you’ve got!
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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected] or [email protected]. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.
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