Carcar City allocates P7M to finish diversion road by November this year

| More |

Monday, January 30, 2012

CARCAR City Mayor Nicepuro Apura said the city has allocated this year a supplemental budget for a four-lane diversion road aimed at decongesting traffic.

A P7-million additional budget will be spent for construction, which started last December, he said.

Have something to report? Tell us in text, photos or videos.

Carcaranons, he said, will no longer experience heavy traffic once the diversion road is finished in time for the city’s annual fiesta on Nov. 24-25.

Construction is expected to finish in 10 months.

He said even a burial procession can already cause heavy traffic in the city.

The amount included in the 2012 budget will not be added to the allocation they spent to acquire land.

The mayor said the City has paid P20 million for the road right-of-way.

The P10-million project stretches about 1.29 kilometers covering Barangay Cogon in Poblacion 1 to Barangay Baraca in Poblacion 2.

Interviewed at the Capitol, Apura said they have started working on Phase 1 of the project in Poblacion 1 and 2.

They stopped the construction for a couple of days last week because of their failure to comply with a clearance requirement from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

Apura said they were not told that DAR needs a pre-requisite from the National Irrigation Administration (NIA).

Work will resume this week after they received an approval from the agrarian reform office.

The diversion road project was one of Apura’s campaign promises.

He said last November that the project has been stalled for at least a year because they waited for an environmental compliance certificate (ECC).

They later found out that it was no longer needed. The certificate of non-coverage (CNC) they received in 2010 would suffice.

Traffic is heavy every weekend and holiday near the city’s rotunda.

Apura said the P36-million budget for the by-pass road in Carcar also started last December. The project aims to give the city a semi-circumferential road.

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on January 30, 2012.