“Hoy, gising” an ABS-CBN prodder

I hope ABS-CBN permits me to use this title of its 1992 program even if I do not really know to whom I will address this prodder “Hoy, gising”.

A little more than two years ago, the Honorable Cebu City Sangguniang Panlungsod Member Gerry Guardo, delivered a privilege speech at the City Council session asking the city executive department to hasten the widening of the road from Barangay Talamban to Barangay Pit-os. Honestly, the speech itself could have been composed with the jarring impact of the ABS-CBN’s “Hoy, gising” without losing its respectfulness to the then sitting mayor Edgardo Labella, (now with the Lord) but the councilor, given his less combative nature, chose to sound more benign.

Anyway, this was how the CDN report was written: “Guardo delivered a privilege speech xxx on July 21, 2021, and appealed to the executive department to push through with the planned road widening in the said areas as the project has long been delayed.” Accordingly, the Department of Public Works and Highways planned the project as a 20-meter wide road with the sidewalk, including the curve and gutter and a drainage system on both sides, thus converting the road into four-lanes from the existing two-lanes.

The passage of time though has somehow blurred my memory. What I can faintly recall is that sometime in the year 2010 or more than a decade ago, the city appropriated some ?156 million for this project (was this the correct amount budgeted?). The allocation was intended for the widening of the road into a four-lane highway starting from the rear portion of the Barangay Talamban covered basketball court through barangays San Jose and Bacayan and unto the central part of Barangay Pit-os.

To pursue the immediate implementation of the project, surveys were conducted. Houses affected by the widening of the road were identified and the red-colored signs up to the planned width were visibly marked. In fact, earlier on, there were demolitions of condemned structures. I saw those indicators almost every Saturday that I visited my small garden in the mountains.

When Councilor Guardo delivered his privilege speech in 2021, he claimed that first, the project was already long overdue. He could have declared, in clear and damning language, that more than 10 years had already passed yet the completion was far from sight. Councilor Guardo revealed secondly that “about 98 percent of structures affected by the said project were already been paid”. (sic) What he failed to mention was that many of those which were already paid have not been demolished and worse some of those which were taken down have returned to the areas they vacated.

The inexplicable delay to pursue the project is now equal to catastrophic failure. To prove this point, we only have to negotiate the six-kilometer distance between Lahug and Talamban. When the road widening was still a concept in the late 1990’s, it would take a car owner to reach Talamban from Lahug (or return) 10 minutes on leisure driving. Presently, a 45-minute to an hour’s drive is normal. If we consider that the Pit-os to Talamban road is a funnel for the people and vehicles from many mountain barangays as well as the exponentially increasing number of residential subdivisions in the area, the traffic to the city is foreseen to be unbearably congested.

“Hoy, gising!” and more. When government leaders, whoever they may be, wake up from unforgivably sleeping on this Talamban-Pit-os road widening project, they should draw, double time, a plan to build a new and another highway to link Talamban and the city proper.