Dave Achondo EVERYONE is so busy with martial law, including barangay officials who are and still neglecting their jobs and who seem to forget they still have roles they have to fulfill like maintaining their roads. I was planning to write my take on martial law but seeing everyone expressing their own ideas regarding it, I opted to just write about something else. How many times did we have to call the attention of our barangay officials so they would work to fix our roads? I am guessing we have to scold them till infinity and beyond before they act or we just have to wait till the upcoming barangay elections for them to even understand that it is their responsibility. As you can see in your own barangay, bad roads have become a nuisance. The potholes that are getting bigger and deeper. In our barangay, I see no action from our own officials. Take, for example, the very deep pothole on Tomas Saco 8, near a bar. It is so deep that every time the motorela passes, it is as if I’m riding a roller coaster. That is how deep it is. I guess someone has to get injured or worse, die before they take action. Another example is in the Trendline area. That god-forsaken pothole near Motormate, is so huge that people who who pass it would feel like they are going to flip over. This city has always amused me because of road projects that do not make any sense at all. Politicians have this tendency to fix a good road so that everyone can see that they are doing something with the budget that they have been given. I don’t blame them as it has always been a common practice for politicians to destroy a perfectly good road so that others would see it. But isn’t that irrational? What pisses me off more is knowing no official doing anything to remedy the situation. There are more roads in the barangay areas that need fixing. Recall the road near Liceo University. It did not even need any upgrade or fixing yet they did it anyway. Next is a road at Buena Oro. It is still under construction as we speak. But, dear lord, whoever is the contractor of that project should just quit and retire. What kind of a contractor would destroy the entire two-lane road while fixing only one lane? What incompetence! Who is responsible for that project? My main concern is that the potholes that are getting deeper. Officials, particular the chairman of each barangay, should be mindful of what needs to be fixed. Potholes are only one of the issues that they have to deal with. Doing nothing only means they are incompetent. (Another issue they also have to deal with is the piling up of trash.) They should put make potholes as one of their priority projects to prevent accidents. Major repairs of roads should be carefully studied before implemented. The plans of the contractors should always be scrutinized and deliberated properly before they even start the construction.