PITY THE business establishments along that stretch of the old Gapan-San Fernando-Olongapo Road, also known as Jose Abad Santos Avenue, crossing Lazatin Avenue in the City of San Fernando.
Before the Holy Week of 2012, after much wrangling with the city government and the Department of Public Works and Highways over easement concerns, the businessmen fully acceded to the construction of a fly-over at the junction. Promised as they were with a June 30 completion, in the year 2012, so everybody presumed.
July – 2012 – has kicked in, but not a single pillar or post, not even a steel frame, is evident at the site.
The portion of the road to serve as approaches to the fly-over, so it is conceded have been partly concreted, the outer lanes though scraped and dug, limiting the highway to single lanes, perpetually enveloped in fine dust on sunny days, mired in mud after every rain.
Yeah, a dust bowl that area has become, burying the businesses there.
“If they do not finish these works soon, we would have to close down or move elsewhere.
We have lost not only our customers that resulted to very low sales and patronage, but we are severely affected by dust, mud, lack of parking spaces and heavy traffic. People and motorists simply skip us.”
So a Sun-Star Pampanga story quoted a businessman.
A pass by that road affirms everything he said. And more.
The breakfast, lunch and dinner crowds at Café Rustico, Fortune Seafood Restaurant and Holiday land, have taken their voracious appetites elsewhere.
The pasalubong seekers at Tita’s and Pampanga’s Best, moving fast and past the Dolores fly-over to other kakanin centers beyond.
Possibly, the prospective buyers of Kia and Suzuki vehicles have dwindled.
Adversely affected too are the vulcanizing shops there.
Even callers and supplicants to 3rd District Representative Aurelio “Dong” Gonzales – not the least of whom is the poet-columnist Macky Pangan – have been deprived of the Cong’s beneficence.
The road leading to Gonzales’ home in Morning Sun Subdivision rendered inaccessible by all that digging and scraping.
Smarting from the inconvenience, aye, the high toll the over-delay in the fly-over cum road construction exacted on their establishments, the Association of JASA Business Owners have taken to hanging streamers along their frontages screaming: Hoy! Bilisan ang construction! Business affected badly!
Ah, if only curses could kill, the DPWH and city hall would have most certainly turned into an instant vale of tears, replete with the biblical wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Curiously, there appears to be no effort whatsoever from the DPWH – its First District Engineering Office that handles the road works, specifically – and the President’s Bridge Program of the Project Management Office (PMO) who has jurisdiction over the fly-over to rush things at the construction site.
One can see but a handful of workers, one or two heavy equipment on weekdays there. Nada on Sundays.
Curioser yet is the deafening silence of the city government of San Fernando over the cries and plaints of the businessmen.
And to think that under incumbent Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez, the City of San Fernando has been successively – for the past three years, if memory serves right – hailed by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry as “Most Business-Friendly City” meriting an honoured spot in some Hall of Fame!
What gives, here, Mayor?
All this delay in the fly-over and road construction is definitely nowhere near that priority in your Eight-Point Agenda of “Kalsadang Malinis, Biyaheng Mabilis!”
Indeed, the sorry state of the GSO/JASA a most literal negation of the President’s pronounced policy, aye, the very core value of the Aquino administration that is daang matuwid.
Shame.
