Marikina City Engineering Office

After much delay, we still haven't received our clearance from the Marikina City Engineering office for our house's electrical system. Without this, Meralco refuses to process our application. I've been working with a contact of Tito Bert named "Rey" who claims to know people inside the City Hall, but the movement has been really sluggish.

I decided to take the afternoon off to get to the bottom of things at City Hall. I first went to the main Marikina City Hall where electrical permits are usually released. The City Hall is well kept and organized. There are people (city employees) roaming around offering strangers help if they look lost (like myself). Quite impressive.

When I got to the engineering window, the lady told me she does not know the name that Rey referred. As it turned out, the engineering office is in the City Hall Annex which is quite far. I took a tricycle going there. Cost me PHP20! I haven't taken a tricycle ride for a very long time and I was very surprised that it costs that much nowadays.

At the engineering office, I found the contact lady. Then we had to wait for the City Engineer to sign off on the papers. He was out on a meeting. So after what felt like a couple of hours, the contact lady offered to bring the papers inside to the restaurant from the Engineer was meeting another client to have it signed. At that time, it was also closing time already and I guess they were embarrassed that I was sitting it out there.

After a long wait, the paper came back and was signed by the supervisor who was also still there waiting. With the paper finally released, the next challenge now is to get our permanent breaker from Meralco.