A SISTER of our wife who now resides in Greensboro, Alabama, United States, advised our family that she sent two Balikbayan boxes containing various items in time for Christmas 2025. The shipment was coursed through an agent firm of a well-known Philippine forwarding company with operations worldwide. It was picked up from her residence in early July this year, roughly five (5) months ago.
Since the forwarding firm has a tracking system that allows both the shipper and consignee to monitor the shipment’s whereabouts at any given time, we began inquiring about the shipped boxes intended for the family as early as the first week of last November.
Sometime in the second week of that month, we learned the boat was already in Singapore and was to leave for Manila on the 23rd of the same month. Knowing the distance of Singapore from Manila, our expectation was that in a week’s time, from November 23. We thought that by the end of that month, the boat bringing the Balikbayan boxes would have already landed in the Manila port.
If Customs random inspection is to be added and the transfer of the cargoes to the forwarding company’s warehouse, we were certain that by the first week of this month, the Balikbayan boxes would have already been segregated by destination in the Philippines.
When we made the next tracking toward the end of the first week of December, we learned that supposedly all boxes due for the Davao Region were already shipped on the 6th of December. The boats plying Manila-Davao via General Santos City or Cagayan de Oro usually take two to three days of travel.
Unfortunately, Christmas had already passed, and the day after tomorrow is already 2026. Yet when our son checked with the forwarding company’s tracking system, the information given was still “the Balikbayan boxes including those that are due your family are on its way to Davao City.”
Well, for a company that prides itself on technology-driven operations, five months of boat travel from the southeastern coast of the United States to the Philippines is one record established for beating.
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Since early this year, the relief road from the junction of Magtuod-C.P. Garcia Diversion Highway going to Barangay Magtuod proper to New Carmen up to New Valencia crossing Biao Escuela to Calinan Road has been hit by no less than three landslides in different sections.
The collapse of the roadside happened when heavy rains fell in that section while the same stretch is undergoing expansion and concreting. The latest of the landslides is the one that hit the embankment on the approach of the bridge spanning the deep ravine, less than 100 meters from the city’s garbage disposal area in New Carmen.
The landslide is so massive that the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has ordered that only light vehicles pass the remaining single lane considered by the agency’s experts as capable of carrying the vehicle weight.
The last time we used the route was when we were on board a Bongo vehicle loaded with sounds, lights, and band equipment. Since the vehicle we were on board was considered under the “light” category, we were allowed to cross the landslide section using the remaining single lane declared by DPWH engineers as still having the carrying capacity. We thanked God for making it to the other side without anything untoward happening to us.
But many are now asking these question: When will the DPWH, or whatever government agency mandated to address such a problem, start to work on the restoration of the collapsed embankment? Is the DPWH going to wait until some lives are lost or some motorists injured and maimed in that dangerous section of the Magtuod-New Carmen-New Valencia road before it starts doing what is necessary in the foregoing situation?”
And why are we calling the attention of the DPWH? It is simply because addressing the landslide problem is not part of the contract between the agency and the construction firm undertaking the expansion and concreting job on the Magtuod-New Carmen-New Valencia Road.
Nevertheless, the said government agency must also call the attention of the contractor of the expansion and concreting project on that relief road stretch. It’s been more than five years since the work on that particular government project began.
Still, it has remained uncompleted by the contractor firm that also virtually “abandoned” an underpass project in General Santos City.
Is the contractor also abandoning the Magtuod-New Carmen-New Valencia project? From the looks of the situation, many are starting to entertain the idea.
