Tweets fail to speed up road repairs

Briefing reporters, deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said #Lubak2normal had received reports for city and municipal roads in need of fixing. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Road travel is not yet “back to normal” in Metro Manila and nearby provinces as “tweets” have failed to hasten road repairs.

Despite the “#Lubak2normal” Twitter campaign of Malacañang against potholes wrought by the monsoon rains a month ago, only half of the roads have been repaired by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

The social media campaign of the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office (PCDSPO) and the DPWH, which began on August 10, has received a total of 3,459 tweets on the locations of potholes.

The drive seeks the assistance of Twitter users to report the location of potholes, so the DPWH could repair them.

Tweet reports on roads under the jurisdiction of provincial governments were only 37-percent “addressed.”

Briefing reporters, deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said #Lubak2normal had received reports for city and municipal roads in need of fixing.

As of the latest report from DPWH, 50 percent of these roads had already been repaired.

As of August 30, the social media campaign has elicited a total of 241 reports on specific national road locations within Metro Manila that were “in need of repair,” said Valte.

“Of these, 125 or 51.87 percent of reported locations had already been fixed by the DPWH as of Thursday last week. We are awaiting further reports from the DPWH on the status of the remaining reports,” she said. Michael Lim Ubac