Rama to telcos: take out more poles, dangling wires
Telecommunications companies have to remove more redundant posts and dangling wires, Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama said following a walk-through on several streets in the city yesterday.
Rama, together with representatives from Globe Telecom, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), Visayan Electric Company (Veco), Cebu Catholic Television Network (CCTN), Telecom Infrastructure Corp. of the Philippines and members of Technical Infrastructure Committee (TIC), walked from D. Jakosalem Street, Plaza Independencia to M.J. Cuenco Avenue and to Imus Street to see if telcos met their promise to remove old posts and dangling wires.
“It’s better than nothing because I have seen PLDT removing almost 300 posts. That is already an achievement. But we have to think that there are more posts and wires that need to be cut and removed,” Rama said.
During the walk-through, a wooden pole used both by Globe and PLDT on M.J. Cuenco was removed, along with old shoes tossed on wires.
City Engineer Jose Marie Poblete, who heads the TIC, said telcos should hasten its pole agreement with Veco to transfer telco wires to Veco poles.
The agreement to remove dangling wires and unused poles and implement the one-pole policy covered the city’s entire central business district.
Rama scheduled another walk-through with telco representatives on June 12.
Veco representative Don Ouano said they have removed half of the 125 poles that needed to be taken out.
Rama ordered the wooden poles and dangling wires removed after a boy and two women died in separate incidents last year when they were hit by poles that toppled after vehicles snagged on their dangling overhead wires.
The telcos and utility companies later signed a handwritten agreement to address the problem by October last year.
Poblete said they hoped for improvements by June but noted the high cost of removing posts and dangling wires since utility firms would need to carefully extract the poles to avoid service interruptions to establishments such as banks, call centers and offices in these areas.
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