MINDANAO Development Authority (MinDA) Chairman Sec. Leo Tereso Magno clarified yesterday in a press briefing that the visit of President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. to the soon-to-be-opened Bucana Bridge was not a political event.
It was, he said, a simple visit by the head of government of the country, where one of its chartered cities is a beneficiary of an infrastructure project funded through a grant from another nation.
We fully agree with Secretary Leo. He could not have been more correct in saying that the presidential visit was not laced with politics. Politics only came into the picture when some netizens started advancing the idea that the President would claim the bridge as a product of the efforts of his administration.
These netizens even advance the publication through a post on social media, with a timeline of the various activities that led to the realization of the bridge project. That is, from conceptualization, to coming up with a blueprint of the project design, to design revision, to right-of-way acquisition, to finding ways to finance the project.
These are the anti-Marcos netizens did to pre-empt any move by the President to claim credit for the realization of the bridge project. But did Marcos, Jr. really claim credit for fulfilling the long-desired additional span to ease the burgeoning traffic situation in the city proper?
Frankly, we did not find one. Neither did we find even a single statement by the President alluding to his administration being responsible for such a gargantuan project.
Unfortunately, many of those against the President are quick to weaponize their fear of a credit grab by Marcos, Jr. It is our take that actuations like these are among reasons why any hope for a rapprochement or even just putting some civility in the relations among the country’s fighting top political leaders for the sake of a united effort to attain real development is a look far beyond the horizon.
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Yesterday passengers from Toril to Davao City – and possibly from the city’s downtown back home – were queuing for a ride on the fare-free buses operated by the local government under its Transport Modernization Program.
Certainly, the number of passengers would have boosted the income of drivers of public utility jeeps plying the Davao City-Toril-Davao City route had they taken the latter utility vehicles. This is exactly what we meant when we wrote here a few columns back that the fielding of fare-free buses on several routes in the city is both a welcome and an abhorred development in this southern Mindanao metropolis.
Yes, the passenger buses with each unit having so much legroom will be patronized by Davaoenos. They could even be hoping that such a project will not end because getting a free ride would definitely mean additional savings for the income-earning passengers.
But the thousands of drivers who depend on their daily driving of PUJs would mean more deprivation. Possibly, with their depleted income from fare collection, the public utility jeep drivers may quit driving as their income would just be enough to pay for the daily maintenance of their driven vehicles.
And this is where the problem is passed on to the operators whose utility vehicles may end up lying idle for lack of drivers. When this happens the operators will likely miss paying their monthly amortizations for the vehicles acquired by them mostly through financing.
We can only hope that the city government is ready with mitigating measures to confront these possible consequences.
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Here is this internationally-known forwarding company claiming sophistication in its service to clients.
The company prides itself on a computerized tracking system for the whereabouts of the boat that loads the cargoes shipped through them.
The problem however, is that those operating the tracker system are clearly telling half-truths most of the time. And our family is one of the many expecting “Balikbayan” boxes shipped by a sister who is in the United States. The boxes were loaded the first week of July this year. When our son inquired in the second week of November about the ship carrying the cargo for us through the forwarding firm’s tracking system, he was told that the ship was arriving in Manila on the 23rd of that month. But when we inquired again after the 23rd, we were told that the boat was to arrive in Manila on December 2.
Yesterday, we followed up again, and we were advised that the vessel had already arrived, but the boxes will have to undergo Customs inspection.
Well, considering previous years’ experiences where some boxes were used by smugglers and shenanigans to hide their illegal cargo, we feel that having the boxes subjected to Customs scrutiny is just fair.
What we feel is not proper, as far as the forwarding company is concerned, is its non-definitive answers to inquiries about the boat’s arrival and the possible delivery of the expected boxes to the consignee/s.
