Everybody is talking about San Juanico Bridge (SJB). It is the talk of the town not only because of its length, 2.1 kilometers, but because it has become a glaring symbol of the goverment’s incompetence and negligence.
I even wonder if this situtation is a message from above. I am writing this on a Sunday while listening to worship songs on the radio. So maybe it is the reason for the thought that the sorry state of the SJB is a message saying that we have to keep our house in order, that we are placing undue emphasis on matters which do not count much rather than on the basic things like property maintaining the SJB so that it remains useful to the public.
The concept and urgency of properly maintaining the bridge was lost on the minds of the people hired by the governmentm to do the job. They failed us. Now we see a blame game.
In the briefing made by the DPWH to officials it seemed like the present regional management was blaiming previous management for not allocating for funds for the timely repair of the bridge. Also, it looked like the regional office of DPWH was washng its hands saying that they have been proposing substantial repir but these were not appoved by their central office.
We can go futher. They were also suggesting that Congress, who made the budget that did not include their proposal, and ultimately the President who approved the budget, failed them. No funds were allocated for the repair and this led to the present deterioation that requires major repair that could cost billions of pesos and threatens the virtual closure for another year.
More thatn a week ago, Presdent BBM announced that he has directed the DPWH to ensure that SJB can reach 12 tons capacity by end of this year. What he was not told was that the 12-ton capacity wil be enough to allow buses to pass through, if they are empty, no passengers. With passengers, the capacity should be at least 20 tons. The decision is therefore both hilarious and faulty.
The DPWH committed another serious blunder here and made the Presidential directive both laughable and tragic. Laughable because the 12 tons max for vehicle weight is not enough to restore the usefulness of the bridge to the travelling public despite the one billion-peso budget. And tragic because government funds will be used to a point which is next to useless.
The President should revise his directive. Looks like tumawad pa ang DPWH, as a fellow Private Sector Representative in the RDC said in our chat group. The RDC recently endorsed a billion peos budget to restore the 33-ton capacity as requested by DPWH. The President generously reduced it to 12 tons. W H A A A T? DPWH must be grinning from ear to ear. The President just threw them lifejackets.
There are also other problems even after 7 weeks of virtual closuresuch as: barges that can only accommodate cargos and not passengers, vessels that can only dock during high tide. So at the moment the solution favors the cargo trucks and not bus passengers. The 15 to 30 minutes delay in crossing the bridge by car or van still persists. The bridge of love has become a bridge of despair and disappointment.
On top of this, the economic cost of the negligence is enormous. It may not be obvious but it is there. Delays have costs. Increase in the cost of inputs due to increased transport cost will slowly creep in.
Region VIII is a relatively poor, ranking fourth from the bottom in the ranking of regions based on economic production, and then this. It is a catastrophy that has setback the region’s growth by many years.
It is a clear case of negligence rearing its ugly head.
If heads won’t roll after this fiasco, there must be a greater reason than just condonng negligence.
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