No room for parades

I was to meet my brother-in-law last week from Tagbilaran. I was about to go to the pier when I got a phone call from Tagbilaran. My guest failed to catch the ferry because of a parade! The parade blocked the passable streets of Tagbilaran and they couldn't use sidestreets because there apparently is an ongoing frenzy of concreting roads in that city. My guest had to spend one more night in Tagbilaran and made sure he was at the ferry long before any parade could stop him.

I remembered that anecdote as I read with interest my fellow columnist Benjie Calderon's piece on the ongoing public works projects in Dumaguete City. I realized that the road construction projects have not escaped the attention of our barbers. In fact, he notes that this has become one of the hottest topics between barbers and their clients! Indeed, it has been noticed that the government is in a frenzy in concreting roads in the City that even roads which have yet to have potholes, such as Perdices Street, are dug up and replaced.

Because of these projects, there are now so many blocked roads in the city. As a result, driving to your destination could become a very inconvenient experience. I keep telling myself that if even just one parade would ever happen to pass by on what remains of Dumaguete's streets, there could be big trouble from all the inconvenienced motorists.

Our readers who are not from Dumaguete might wonder what is it with parades that I might mention that in this column. Well, I've said my piece about parades in previous columns. Let's hear it from Bishop John Du, who in his homily during the Founder's Day celebration of St. Paul University last October, said, "In Dumaguete, there are many parades. In my observation there are parades every day. One day I counted four parades! So when I was asked, 'Will you join us in our parade?' I said 'Why not convert that parade into prayer?'"

I remember last October, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts held a parade. By coincidence, the senior citizens groups also had a parade going on at the same time. Before we knew it, we saw scouts marching with the senior citizens! I find it funny as I write this column how the absurdity of the situation did not strike me then.

Parades and blocked roads. Hmmm. I didn't realize we could identify with Tagbilaran in that regard.

But I would be remiss if I did not include here what many people are complaining about. It's the manner in which these road concreting projects are being done. The roads are totally blocked because the engineer would insist on taking on both sides of the road at once. Now, this is good if they work on three shifts but these laborers appear to be observing office hours too. They work on the project from 8 a.m. to 5 a.m. And that's just in theory. It's different in actual practice. Go to the site at 8:00 a.m. and no one is working. Go back at 4:40 pm and you won't see anyone at work.

So what happens with this kind of work schedule? A lot of business opportunities are lost. More fuel is wasted. People have to contend longer with dust and other inconveniences that go along with road construction.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who will make a suggestion to have this project worked on 24/7. I'm not an engineer, but I guess the government won't waste or spend more if they do this. They'll actually finish the project in a much shorter time. The earlier they finish the roads, so much the better! We could go on with our lives at the soonest possible time. And who knows? we could even have more room for these "daily" parades, as the good Bishop put it.*

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