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Monday, January 09, 2006
Caraga seen to complete P4B flood control project
By Ben Serrano
Caraga correspondent
BUTUAN CITY -- Construction of the P4.9 billion foreign funded flood control project, otherwise known as the Lower Agusan Development Project (LADP), implemented here in this region's capital of Caraga is seen to be finished this year.
Project director Philip Meñez told Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro that phases I, II, III and IV of the flood control project will be finished by the fourth quarter of this year 2006.
"We are right on target in our schedules if plans won't miscarry because of circumstances beyond our control. Thanks to the support of the local government of Butuan," Meñez said.
Phase I, under the Lower Agusan Development Project (LADP), had already been adjudged as the best in the country in terms of quality and target performance achievement by the Bureau of Standards monitoring of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) central office in Manila.
Butuan City Rep. Leovigildo Banaag, in his speech before 378 inmates at the Butuan City Jail, said the LADP project is one of the flagship project under the Arroyo administration.
"This time with its completion flooding along major thoroughfares will be a thing of the past", Banaag said.
Banaag lauded the efforts of DPWH and the CARBDP for lessening major flooding woes of Butuan City and its low lying barangays.
Irrigation
The DPWH, through its officials Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. and Undersecretaries Manuel Bonoan and Bashir Rasuman, has been fast tracking the project with the support of the local government unit of Butuan City.
"If there is flooding now in Butuan City this is because of the clogged esteros, canals, and floodways, including unfinished portion of the flood control system whose construction is ongoing," said Banaag.
Common affected areas hit by flooding are places where the Butuan Jail facility stands.
The Caraga Regional Development Council listed the flood control system project or the LADP as one of the priority infra development program of Caraga Region.
LADP is the flood control component under the Cotabato-Agusan River Bank Development Project (CARBDP).
The other component is the irrigation system infra development which stands to provide water supply needs to thousands of hectares of rice lands in Agusan, Compostela and Cotabato Valley ranges.
Assistant Administrator Carlos Salazar of the National Irrigation Administration said there are still many works left undone for the irrigation needs of the Caraga Region saying as of the moment only 25 percent of the region's huge rice lands are irrigated.
The project's phase I started in 1992 with only a P610 million budget derived from the Official Development Assistance (ODA) of the Government of Japan through the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).
The flood control project is expected to protect 80,000 hectares of agricultural areas directly benefiting some 350,000 city residents of Butuan City now safe from excessive
The CARBDP management alone managed to relocate 6,000 families to the 100 hectares of land they purchased as relocation site for affected families.
"If funds will allow us, we are planning to buy another 70 hectares of land as relocation site for the affected families", CARBDP Project Director Engineer Philip Meñez said.
(January 9, 2006 issue)
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