Lawmaker told mayor: Focus on own problems

BACOLOD lone district Representative Anthony Golez issued a response to Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia’s letter to the Public Works office.

Leonardia wrote Public Works officer in charge Engineer Reynaldo Venturina about Golez’s asphalt overlay project in Lacson Street, saying the national road “does not need urgent repair/improvement.”

"Focus on your own problems because you have too many instead of intervening in my own projects and programs which are beyond your jurisdiction," the remark of Golez in response to Leonardia.

In the letter, Leonardia also demanded the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) office "to re-align these funds to complete the widening of the Circumferential Road."

"Leonardia has no jurisdiction to demand for the realignment or stoppage of my projects in DPWH nor use his local executive power because DPWH projects are just implementing national projects funded from the PDF of legislators and other line agencies, and decisions are being done in the national level," Golez said.

Golez also said Secretary Rogelio Singson of DPWH has recently clarified in his July 25 2012 Memorandum to all Regional Directors and District Engineers that "realignment for road upgrading from arterial to secondary will not be allowed since it will impact the department's abilities to achieve the targets for the arterial roads by 2014."

The memorandum, Golez stressed, also said that "realignment from arterial to arterial, secondary to arterial and secondary to another secondary can be allowed, subject to approval based on the existing guidelines on realignment."

"I have dozens of small and big projects with orders to proceed; instead of stopping them, Leonardia should instead support them because they are for the Bacolod constituents," Golez said.

“What Leonardia is doing to me and my projects is clearly political intervention and apparently to cover up his own failings to improve the poor state of roads in the city's barangays,” Golez said.

Golez advised Leonardia to focus on his numerous problems with the city's destroyed roads, worsening impact of higher revenues, ejections and demolitions of squatters, lack of medical support for the city's patients in the regional hospital and community health centers, surging criminalities, among others. (PR)