Why use bamboo strips in ‘hanging bridge’?

This is in relation to my earlier letter regarding that “hanging boy” on a cable “bridge” (“Photo of student crossing river on cable should shame PDAF thieves,” 10/7/13).

In the Inquirer’s Oct. 27 issue, the front-page photo shows a hanging bridge in Sevilla, Bohol, framed with steel cables and steel bars, and with bamboo strips for sidings and stepping boards.

In Itogon, Benguet, is also a hanging bridge over Agno River, with steel matting for stepping board, and interlink wires for sidings to prevent accidental falls.

Honestly, I am not inclined to believe that a government engineer would design a bridge like the one in Bohol, with bamboo strips for sidings support and stepping boards? But given the temerity of corruption today, if that bridge in Bohol was constructed by government, I suspect that:

1. The government agency, local government unit (e.g., Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Agriculture), or whoever, designed it to be an all-steel bridge.

2. The implementing agency paid the contractor for it as an all-steel bridge. (Paging the Commission on Audit.)

No government engineer in his sane mind would design a taxpayer-funded hanging bridge with bamboo components, otherwise this is not development.

Priority Assistance Development Fund! That’s why we need to amend the Constitution so we can incorporate a provision requiring that anybody who wants to run for Congress should understand simple English, like the word “priority.”

Then maybe, maybe, our country will not be funny anymore!

—JUNIPER DOMINGUEZ,

dalas812571@yahoo.com