Rama to form task force against dangling wires, redundant poles

A TASK force that will supervise the bundling of overhead wires and the removal of redundant poles in the city’s streets will be created by Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama.

The task force will include the Technical Infrastructure Committee (TIC) and the city’s Quick Response Team (QRT).

Rama said there’s a need to remove the wires and poles since there’s a coming international boxing match to be hosted in Cebu City on April 23.

The mayor said he is not happy with the accomplishment of utility firms and telecommunications companies in bundling overhead wires and removing redundant poles.

Based on the report submitted by the utility firms to the TIC at the end of February, they have only removed 11 percent of the total identified poles within the city’s Central Business District.

Rama said this accomplishment is “negligible.”

“If they will not help, then the city government will address the situation,” Rama said.

“I am not happy. Don’t take the mayor’s threat lightly because May 1 is the deadline and it should be seriously considered by them. There is no sacred cow,” he said.

It was in July last year when the mayor called representatives of the utility firms to a meeting after a series of freak accidents caused by dangling wires.

During the meeting, the firms signed a pledge to remove dangling wires and redundant poles within three months. Their first deadline was last October and they failed to meet it.

The mayor, after a tension-filled meeting last December eventually gave an extension for the utility firms. He wants them to finish by May 1, or a week before the elections.

TIC head Engr. Jose Marie Poblete also said the firms are already around 80 percent done in the bundling of dangling and sagging wires.