This communications firm is not communicating

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A NEWS report read in a national broadsheet says that the Philippine National

Police (PNP) Internal

Affairs Service or IAS is getting a large number of complaints of non-support from either the wives or paramours of policemen.

The number is double the figure of the year 2016.

According to the IAS, this increase in such cases came even after the members of the PNP got their monthly pay doubled shortly after the assumption of President Rodrigo Duterte. The Davaoeno President made good his election campaign promise to hike to almost double the monthly pay of the men and women in uniform.

The news report further quoted an executive of IAS that the hike in salaries of police and military personnel appeared to have made the male members of the country’s security forces more gallivanting. So with the exception of a few good men in the uniform service many added women in their lives. Some, other than their wives, maintain not just one other woman but even two or three more. And the police lothario not just do their vice on an “every now and then” affair but house their women and make separate families with them.

And, with so many mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, children to educate, and other wants to satisfy, the original wives and families now get almost nothing from the increased salary of their policemen-husbands.

The report says that the near-abandoned wives are now up in arms and submitting their complaints of violence against women and children including abandonment of family responsibility.

The IAS, according to the report, is now breaking its heads in order to solve the problem that has negatively impacted on the performance of policemen.

May be there is an easy way out from that wrath. Isn’t it that the figure of non-supporting policemen-husbands to their families has doubled its 2016 level to the number reported this month of the current year?

So, why not withdraw the police salary hike this year, revert to its 2016 level, and re-implement it instead sometime later? We cannot anymore imagine if our police-mengigolos will still proceed with that particular vice of theirs.

Of course it is already common knowledge that some of our law enforcers were (or still are) in such moneymaking extra-curricular activitiesas protectors of drug syndicates and some of its leading members, as “gunfor-hire” group leaders or members, as secret leaders of kidnap-for-ransom gangs, or as protectors/operators of illegal parking and illegal vending areas.

So, the original families are still well-provided even as the other families are satisfactorily maintained.

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What is the status of the service extension project of communication giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) to some interior barangays in Tugbok district. Specifically, the villages where the landline and cyber communication services are to be extended are parts of Talomo Riverside, Biao Joaquin, Talandang, New Valencia, New Carmen, Magtuod, Biao Escuela and Matina Biao. These are interior barangays but with huge number of population and large agricultural and commercial farms such as piggeries and poultry.

Fiber optic cables were strung as early as three years ago with the promise that in a year’s time land lines will be installed with WiFi and internet connections. We have closely monitored the progress of the PLDT communications project as we have a small farm located in one of these barangays and we maintain a residence in the place.

When after two years and a half there was not a single telephone unit offered for installation we decided to inquire at the company’s Calinan sub-office. The answer we got was that the contractors were still installing the digiboxes on designated poles, and that once we can see one near our house and the box already has identifying numbers in it, we can start applying

A few weeks after we discovered that a pole co-used with the electric utility already have an installed digibox

complete with numbers on it. So we went back to the PLDT Calinan office and inquired if we can already apply for connection.

The answer was even more disheartening. The fiber optic cable installed from Calinan towards our barangay has to be replaced as there was an error in the installation. In about a week from the time of our inquiry several contractors were already stringing supposedly the replacement cable much bigger than the previously installed.

Today, almost four months after the new lines were strung we have yet to hear any advisory from PLDT whether we can already apply for telephone connection.

What irony. Here is this pioneering telecommunications company in the country who claims to be still the biggest and most modern. In fact it could be the biggest spender in advertising its products and services. Yet, it has been unable to communicate to the people, specifically residents of the prior-mentioned barangays, the status of its much ballyhooed service extension project in the areas concerned.

Is this telecommunications firm so centrally-run that none of its people in the Davao branch has the authority to disclose the actual status of the project? We are hoping for an answer, please.