IN REACTION to President Duterte’s recent State of the Nation Address or SONA, our Public Safety and Transportation Management Office (PSTMO) under chief Jeck Conlu has launched a campaign for residents to comply with road rights-of-way in Iloilo City.
PSTMO directed Love Joy Hosenilla of the Task Force on Anti-Squatting and Illegal Structures (ASIS) under its supervision to immediately inspect houses or buildings fronting city streets and ask the owners to tear down extended roofs over sidewalks usually occupied as tiangges or sari-sari stores.
We believe this is a round-about approach in solving the problem. The barangay kapitanes in the first place should know what is happening in their barangays and in many cases the sidewalk constructions have their tacit approval or tolerance.
While residential houses fronting roads might originally comply with building regulations because they must secure building permits with the plan submitted to the City Engineer’s Office, there is the problem of additional construction after the permit is issued. Many homeowners would put up a tiangge or sari-sari store in front of their house and they now will encroach on the space intended for sidewalk. Some even use sidewalks as parking lots for their vehicles.
How often does the city engineer’s office conduct regular inspections of city streets to check on such obstructions?
For example, with the widening of several streets, there is the problem of electric posts now found on the roadway; they have not been removed and relocated so as not to obstruct traffic.
We have this situation on major thoroughfares like on De Guzman Street in Mandurriao district towards Barangay Hibao-an and leads to the western towns of Iloilo, and also to our international airport.
There are also electric posts on Timawa Avenue (City Proper) that runs from the corner of the Iloilo Doctor’s Hospital westward to Molo. The road has been expanded years ago but still the electric posts are there encroaching on the roadway and not removed.
To be more effective in the campaign of clearing road obstructions, we believe the PSTMO must involve the barangay kapitanes, this being the direct concern and responsibility of the latter in their barangays.
THE CAT CAME TO THE WEDDING
It is traditional to release a pair of white doves as part of the so-called “freedom ceremony” at the reception.
The birds are placed inside a hanging white bell, then freed by the groom and his bride as they pull together the string that will open a trapdoor for the birds to fly away. This is symbolic of the freedom now acquired by the couple from parental control in their new life together.
But at a wedding ceremony at a hotel one morning, when the trapdoor was opened no birds came out even when the waiter was already shaking the hanging bell.
Finally, he used a long bamboo stick to drive out the birds inside and a big cat fell from the trapdoor to the tiled floor below. One of the birds was between its teeth while the other fell on the floor already dead!
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GEM OF THOUGHT
“Success under a good leader is the people’s success.” – Lao Tsu (For comments or re-actions, please e-mail to jnoveracompany@yahoo.com/PN)
