During our Katon years, we were akin to cherubs in many ways. Our very young lives were fairytale-like then, I would say, not because of our Maestra’s magic wand but because of our innate childhood innocence.
When I was a Grade-2 pupil at the Buhi Elementary School, the Riprap behind the school campus became my arena and short-time-day spa or resort of sort.
To escape from the manual chore of grass cutting in our assigned patch in the school ‘bull-ground’ my newfound-truant friends and I would surreptitiously ‘escape’. ‘Mageskip kita sa Riprap’ (Let’s play truant at the Riprap.).
Through a secret hole in the thick-bamboo-twig (kagingking) fence we’d cross the forlorn dirt-road shored up by a high-concrete-riprap embankment spanning perhaps 40-meter long. Down the Riprap wall’s low portion we would go down to the then pristine part of the Rinaga’ river for a cool-river dip amidst the fast-setting sun.
The Riprap was to boys mainly a trying place of their budding manliness. A classroom dare from another boy – ‘Sa Riprap kita! Eskwir sana.’ (See you at the Riprap mano-a-mano!). Thus for many of a boy like me, our ‘manly’ initiation at the Riprap in settling disputes with brute force and violence came to be.
Lately, a new Riprap has wormed into our community sensibilities. This time no one seems to be able to make sense of it!
While there obviously is a riffraff of corrupt government officials, functionaries or private contractors who obviously botched up the Rinaga River riprap project our extant concerned local government officials and functionaries are obviously unwilling to do something about this.
This is in spite of massive evidence some links of which were posted in Buhi Online Facebook and You Tube by concerned citizens such as:
When I posted the link several months ago for the Philippine Commission on Audit’s (COA) Fraud Report site and asked at least for information on the project name and other details so BOL can itself file the COA report, the twits stopped all of a sudden.
Surprisingly or perhaps not so surprisingly, the blog I wrote with the same title last year in October got merely a lukewarm reaction with one comment to date coming from Tagasi’rip who obviously uses only a pen-name.
But again last week when the BOL Facebook posts became alive with election issues, the Rinaga’ River riprap scam once again became an active issue in the discussions. New accusations surfaced on BOL Facebook though from an anonymous person using the pen-name Anthony Francisco.
Though Anthony Francisco’s earlier posts were taken out or deleted already by BOL, his persistence coupled with the lack of BOL Facebook FAN ‘reporting’ his posts as inappropriate, BOL decided to let his succeeding posts remain. BOL feels that it cannot justly block his posts permanently until it gets sufficient feedback or ‘reports’ that would warrant it to do so.
The nagging question though is: will we ever get a response or positive action from our local public officials to look into this obvious issue of public-project mismanagement and even the corruption of public officials or what mudslinging candidates of earlier elections refer to as KICKBACK!
The least that I personally could ask from the only openly-identified currently-serving public official of Buhi LGU active in BOL Facebook the Honorable Councilman Edwin Salvamante is his indulgence to bring the clamor of many in BOL Facebook particularly to get the official stand of the incumbent elected officials of Buhi in this issue including the Municipal Council of which he is a member of.
My previous blog with the same title TE’EM NA way back in October last year raised many questions on the Rinaga’ River project and floated suggeted action particularly for the Municipal Council.
Will we ever get answers to these?
Kin indi’ mageskip n asana ako sa Riprap, maray pa… Ay inda baga?
MABALOS,
Al Claveria