Overhead wires be gone

Finally, if everything goes as planned, the days of spaghetti wires in Cebu City’s skyline will be history.

The Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) announced that it will move its electric wires underground beginning with the ones lining both sides of Osmeña Boulevard.

The announcement was made to editors and media executives in a luncheon hosted by Veco and the timing could not be more auspicious.

Complaints about unsightly wires often appear in the newspapers though the Cebu city ordinance mandating underground wiring is more than a decade old.

Underground power lines are not unprecedented in Cebu City. There is barely any overhead wire in Asiatown IT Park in barangay Apas and Cebu Business Park, two of the city’s most modern locations.

Veco’s “Osmeña Boulevard Underground Installation” project, which will cost the firm P205,065,774.95 and roll out in 2013 and 2014 is a good, if rather late start to mainstreaming what has been a longtime feature of the business parks.

The completion of the project will herald a series of goodbyes.

Goodbye to ugliness in the air.

Goodbye to the unnecessary trimming of trees. Wires will no longer interfere with the tropism of their branches.

Goodbye to the risk of pedestrians getting electrocuted by hanging or accidentally cut wires.

Goodbye to easy pilferage of electricity. Those who practice illegal wire “tapping” would have to be extra stealthy to source power from subterranean wires.

Goodbye to hazardous leaning poles, especially wooden poles which in any case are scarce because of forest depletion and the total log ban that is in effect.

The 10-year grace period to imlement Ordinance No. 1894 lapses this year.

Better late than never.

Now when will other telephone, cable TV and telecommunication firms follow suit with their bundle of overhead wires?