Construction at the Veterinary Clinic

This post is a continuation and update of two previous posts. It fits right in with the post about unsanitary veterinarian clinic practices and happened the same day I took a stray dog to the vet as chronicled in the post about dog cruelty.

To get right to the point there was on-going construction in one of the rooms housing dogs.

Clearly you can see they did not remove all the dogs from the room before they started work on the ceiling. The cage in the foreground has an open top so there is nothing to protect the dog from falling debris. One of the cages is even being used as a table to place materials and tools. 

In these pictures you can see more of the work being done.

These men are installing a new ceiling. New wooden panels. Once installed they are painting them with a roller which means paint is being flecked about as the roller moves. I have done this kind of work and know that flecks of paint will inevitably get all over the place yet there are no tarps covering the animal cages left in the room. You cannot see in the picture but there are a few cages sitting outside in the back. Why not move the rest outside or move the remaining cages to one side and work that half of the room and then shuffle them back to finish what remains?

Construction, even this kind of light construction, always has hazards. I have helped install drop ceilings and painted ceilings before and it is a fact that debris and paint will fall all over the floor. It cannot be helped. Perhaps the amount of falling debris and paint might be small and non-lethal but that is completely beside the point. Those falling hazards are dangerous for these dogs. Especially the dog who's cage has an open top. Who knows what will happen? That is why safety measures are taken on all construction sites. But not in the Philippines. In the Philippines safety consistently takes a back seat.

Panaad Festival Held In A Construction Zone

The second week in April was the premier festival of all Negros Island, Panaad.  This festival allows each city on the island to showcase their local delicacies as well as fashions and other cultural folkways like dancing.  On previous visits to this festival I was on the search for real honey. So I made my way to the organic section of the festival which was located in a different place from past years.

Because it was early in the morning not many people were out. Walking around nothing really caught my eye.  It seemed to be the same old products I have seen being sold at mall kiosks and other organic fairs. That this display of undisputedly fake honey was allowed into the Panaad Organic Village turned me off to the idea of actually finding any real honey.

That is a display of Wise Man's Food Pure Honey which I wrote about in 2017 and which incidentally if you search that name this blog is the first of only two results! Wise Man's Food is fake. Green honey is not to be found anywhere in nature. Who audits these vendors?

Ennui set in real quick as I realised I did not wish to spend much money anyway.  Certainly not P200 on a bottle of dubious honey. Walking across the area was a bit of a chore because there were large rocks and my slippers were thin. Rain had fallen the previous night and muddied up the place making the situation worse. Finally I found a vendor selling coffee for P15.  I bought a cup and sat down to drink it in peace.

Looking around it occurred to me that something was not right. Then all of a sudden it hit me. This is a construction zone! The organisers of Panaad had moved the organic market to a construction zone.  Look at these pictures:

Those steel girders are obviously the skeleton of a roof that has not even been completed. And how about all the rocks?  Those are not tiny pebbles.

In this photo you can see two tiny concrete pillars amongst the large rocks.

This is a trench filled with broken rubble surrounding one vendors stand. How is this even safe?

More rocks that must be traversed to access a vendor.  But this next one takes the cake.

These vendors have constructed a bridge to make access to their table much easier and safer. Otherwise there is huge trench that must be crossed. These people at least had the insight to know that having your customers navigate a deep trench is not a safe idea. So why didn't the organisers of the festival have this realisation? Who the heck thought holding any kind of activity in this construction zone was a good and safe idea? But remember in the Philippines safety comes last.

After finishing my coffee I looked around for a trash bin in which to toss it. I didn't see one at first but I did see these signs:

Where's the trash can so I can clean as I go?  It's right here of course:

What a joke. I really do not like Panaad and knowing that they moved the one aspect of the festival I have any interest in to a construction zone and that they allow vendors selling fake products makes me to never want to return.

Sidewalk to Nowhere

This article is a year in the making. Everything below happened in April 2018. I wrote it in October but got sidetracked and decided to wait for a whole year to pass just to see if the situation would change. It did not.

A few months ago a shed popped up out of nowhere!

Turns out the shed was to house the men who were about to reupholster the sidewalk

See how hard they are working? What they are doing is placing faux red bricks onto an already existing sidewalk to....beautify it? I have no idea. But they sure are working hard. And that means sleeping hard too.

A hard day of work follow by a few hours of well-deserved drinking and snoozing. What a life. But then one day the shed disappeared and so did the workers. The sidewalk was not even finished. Where did they go?

Down the street to the next barangay!

And you know what? They actually finished the job in that new location. However it is now October and has been SEVEN MONTHS and the original location they were at remains unfinished!

It's doubtful they will finish the job anytime soon. Besides this is literally a sidewalk to nowhere in the middle of nowhere. Why even waste the time and money to beautify it? What is the point? In several spots across town they are adding brick to an already perfectly good sidewalk. What for? When they do this work they dump the sand and bricks in the road which impedes traffic flow.  In some places they have had to use huge boulders to fill in ditches and build the sidewalk. 

In places where they are upgrading the sidewalk they not only have to place the brick but they also have to redo the curb with a whole lot of cement and it looks bad.  Even in places where they originally had brick it looks terrible. Like this sidewalk near the mall.  

The lack of sidewalks is a big problem in the Philippines. Why bother fixing what is just fine the way it is? Sidewalks are for walking. They don't need to be beautified. They are purely functional. But if they are going to spend the money to beautify the sidewalk they should spend the money on the upkeep. That this sidewalk, which is one big trip hazard, is allowed to remain in this state is ridiculous.

Painting the Red Sidewalk Red

These hardworking men are painting the red sidewalk red.

What is the point of this? Its dumb enough that a perfectly good sidewalk was torn up and destroyed with debris laying on the side of the road for months as they glued those faux brick tiles on the smooth concrete.

It's dumb enough that the curb was hand painted with yellow and black stripes using non reflective paint which totally defeats the purpose of the curb being painted so it can be seen at night. At least I think that is the purpose of painting the curb but then why use black? Heck why not use white like these guys:

This whole project of beautifying sidewalks by glueing faux brick tile to the concrete is happening all over town and it makes no sense whatsoever. These sidewalks were perfectly fine. A sidewalk serves a utilitarian purpose of allowing people to walk safely from one destination to another. Unless the sidewalk is in a car-free pedestrian shopping area it makes no sense to embark on a beautification project.

Because this project has taken so long to complete trip hazards were introduced thus making the sidewalks more dangerous.

It's bad enough they created these trip hazards when just a few yards away is the following sight:

Why are those two men painting the red sidewalk red? It's make-work. It serves no purpose except to further whatever scam is taking place here. How would this scam work? Perhaps someone suggests this worthless project and the city agrees to it and then there is overbidding and skimming from the top. It has been almost a year since these projects have begun and they are still not finished. I'm pretty sure it's a scam of some sort. If it's not a scam it is mighty stupid and pointless and the money could have gone to a more needful project somewhere else.

Before and After

The premise is pretty simple. These are before and after pictures of construction zones and trash piles and other things.

Things start out really bad in this construction zone when a pole is left leaning on a building. Very dangerous.

Months later and it appears they removed that leaning pole completely.

This one is before and after and after!

From trashy to flashy. Very colourful.

First picture is 9 May, 2017.

Second picture is 10 September, 2018.

Next picture is 30 January, 2019.

Construction on this house started and stopped in 2016. You can see the massive growth in the first picture and in the second the removal of all that growth. In the last picture an old woman is retrieving wooden planks from the housing frame for her own use. Will the skeleton of this house that never was simply crumble into the earth or will vandals disassemble it brick by brick?

Before the fight:

After the fight:

The fierce wind KO'd this tarp!