Monday, July 02, 2007 P7M to repair a lamp? By Linette C. Ramos Sun.Star Staff Reporter
IT’S not only the decorative lampposts used during the Asean Summit that’s giving Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña a headache.
Four lampposts installed along the viaduct leading to the South Road Properties (SRP) are already missing and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it, he said.
Osmeña told reporters he already wrote DPWH, requesting the agency to repair the lamps, but he still has not received any reply.
The mayor believes that a defective lighting facility on the roads leading to the SRP will affect the marketability of the 290-hectare facility.
Anytime this year, the City will bid out at least 30 hectares of land at the SRP, which officials hope will yield P2 billion to P4 billion.
“The missing lampposts near the viaduct will affect the marketability of the SRP but it’s not going to be fatal, because that’s a DPWH project. The important thing is that the SRP itself is lighted,” Osmeña said.
He warned that the damage can get worse and repair costs could increase if the lamps are not attended to.
“If DPWH doesn’t repair that, we’re going to lose a lot of money. The first time, there was only one missing and that cost P7 million to repair. Now there are four lamps missing. They should fix that because that’s their project,” he said in an interview last Saturday.
Osmeña said the DPWH is also remiss in their task to turn over the 360 decorative lampposts along Salinas Drive and S. Osmeña Blvd. to the City Government for the latter to maintain.
Unpaid electricity bills prompted the Visayan Electric Co. to cut off power supply to the lampposts, which were installed before the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit.
They have not been lighted for several months now and some have already been vandalized while under the care of the contractor and the DPWH.
But he will not insist on that in the meantime so DPWH can work on repairing the viaduct lighting facilities first, the mayor said.
Outside the SRP, the lampposts are expensive to install and repair because the wires are not overhead but buried underground, he explained. Also, the cable wires used are not ordinary but thick and heavy-duty.
Osmeña said that when the City Government had to replace the stolen wires and cables for one lamppost within the SRP, it had to spend P1 million for one lamp alone.
