AS FAR as we can recall, the reason why our congressmen in Davao City’s three districts are pushing for the street lighting project is to save on cost in electric bills from the local power distributor.
Yes, while the city does not spend a single centavo on the acquisition and installation of the sodium street lights (labor and maintenance included), these are among the biggest contributors to the city’s monthly power bill.
With the present number of streetlights installed by Davao Light, plus the thousands of solar-powered bulbs lining the city’s roads at roughly 20 to 30 meters distance in between, Davao is indeed one of, if not the most, massively lighted cities these days.
But what happened to the original intention in shifting to solar street lights, which is to reduce the electricity bill of the local government?
We are asking this question because we have observed during our many trips to downtown Davao at night, the sodium lamps installed by the power firm are still very much around and still lighting.
Clearly, the city’s power bill remains at the level before the solar-powered lamps were put up in all of Davao City.
Meaning, other than adding to the city’s beauty during nighttime, the local government is still saddled with the gargantuan financial requirement for paying the monthly electricity bill.
Of course, with the huge income that the city government is getting from its people and juridical entities, the amount needed to settle its monthly power payable may only be a pittance.
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Yesterday, toward noon, we again used the route Catalunan Grande-Tacunan-Biao Matina in going home to our rural residence from the city proper.
Every time we do, we cannot help but take a look at a concrete bridge spanning the small creek dividing Catalunan Grande and Tacunan. As we have written many times in the past columns of ours, the bridge itself has long been completed, except that the approach at the Tacunan end of the span has not been put up.
On the other hand, the approach at the Catalunan end of the roughly 15-meter-long bridge was completed almost at the same time as the connector itself. The only problem is that, for still unknown reasons, the approach has not yet been connected to the main road.
But there was one thing we saw on the bridge yesterday. Its metal railings are already destroyed and detached from the concrete component. We would not be surprised if, anytime soon, the metal railings will suddenly go missing. These items are very attractive to scrap metal buyers.
Perhaps that particular bridge project deserves to be given the attention of the investigators of the Independent Commission for Infrastructures (ICI). It may not be a total ghost project, but certainly an unfinished one that could have already been reported as completed some years back and already fully paid. Maybe it is also imperative that the investigators from the ICI and the Davaoeno public know the contractor of that particular infrastructure.
That bridge may not cost much, but it’s certainly worth several million of taxpayers’ money.
Will anyone from the local office of the DPWH in the city, or the City Engineer’s Office come forward and explain the bridge project’s present status?
And, cannot anyone among our councilors, especially the chair of the Council’s Infrastructure Committee, pay a visit to the said project and find out if its present condition is not worth a Council investigation?
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For local governments that have experienced getting hit by various natural disasters like floods, constructing a somewhat permanent evacuation facility is worth every citizen’s appreciation.
But it is only in our City that we saw an evacuation structure that doubles up as a public market. We have no doubt that the facility, a four-level imposing building, can accommodate a good number of families, hundreds of market stalls, and hundreds, even thousands, of market goers on any day.
But what will the agglomeration of evacuees and market vendors, and market goers make of the situation when the magnitude of the calamity requires the evacuation of a huge number of families?
Will it not possibly create another form of disaster that could endanger the health of both the evacuees and the market vendors and goers because of congestion?
We cannot really help but ask the questions because this is the only project of this nature that we have seen and heard about.
And of all places, only in Davao City.
