Construction firm disregards safety issue

Building contractor Mega Stonerich Corp. almost turned the house of my friend Peyo Pineda into a cold tombstone Sunday, three days after All Saints’ Day.

A cement slab weighing about 100 kilograms fell on Peyo’s house from Wil Tower, which is undergoing construction on Eugenio Lopez Drive—where the country’s biggest network ABS-CBN is located—in Quezon City.

The debris went through Pineda’s roof and fell into the bedroom of his son Gino.

Luckily, Gino was not in his room.

Pineda’s wife, Susie, recuperating from cancer surgery, was still in a state of shock as this column was being written on Monday.

Even the usually stoic Pineda was shaken by the incident.

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Peyo and Susie couldn’t understand why Sunday’s incident still happened after they had complained about Metro Stonerich’s apparent disregard of safety measures in the past.

The Pinedas had complained to this writer—their complaint saw print in this space on October 16—that debris and human feces fell on their roof from Wil Tower.

Metro Stonerich president Bong Nuno went to the Pinedas the day the item in this column appeared.

Nuno said some of his construction workers were probably quite careless in doing their job, and that he would address the problem.

(Perhaps, the workers are disgruntled and that’s why they throw a lot of stuff around, including garbage)

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This incident does not speak well of a construction firm that made its name building and refurbishing big malls in Metro Manila.

It certainly does not speak well of Nuno, whose mother, Zamboanga City Councilor Lilia Nuno, is running for the city’s congressional post.

The accident speaks volumes about the inefficiency of a Quezon City building official, Isagani Versoza, and of course, his boss, Mayor Herbert “Bistek” Bautista.

I tried to call Versoza on Monday to report the incident to no avail.

The staff in his office said he was out and didn’t want to be disturbed.

Somebody at City Hall told me Versoza had plenty of “extra-curricular activities,” whatever that means.

That’s probably the reason he could not be disturbed.

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I don’t think Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile would do what an election registrar in Cagayan province claimed was “unkind treatment” she got from the senior senator.

Edna Tacazon, 61, said Enrile called up Commission on Elections Chair Sixto Brillantes from her post when “I was just doing my job.”

Enrile confronted Tacazon about reports that she had refused to give out registration forms to would-be registrants on the deadline of poll registration.

“Boy (Brillantes’ nickname), I want this girl out of my district,” Tacazon quoted Enrile as telling Brillantes over the phone within her hearing distance.

If ever the Senate President did that, Tacazon probably sounded discourteous when he made queries, prompting him to call Brillantes.

There’s no reason for Enrile to go down to the level of a warlord since he’s not running for reelection.

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I can’t fault Tacazon either if she was rattled by the big number of registrants on the last day of registration.

I blame the Filipino’s propensity for putting things off until the deadline.

That’s the reason there is a huge number of people filing income tax returns on the last day of filing.

One of the Filipino’s outstanding character flaws is his mañana habit,  or putting off for tomorrow what you can do today.