Wednesday, August 08, 2007 City Hall to stop hotel building
THE Cebu City Government is issuing today a work stoppage order against Young Builders Corp. in the construction of the 25-story Hongkong Plaza Hotel along J. Solon St., a portion of which collapsed last week after a heavy rain.
Camputhaw Barangay Captain Lorenzo Basamot also sent the company a cease-and-desist order yesterday and instructed that a retaining wall should be built before further diggings could be done.
Basamot said the retaining wall would help arrest further damage to the road, with half of its width already hollow underneath because of a cave-in.
“Ni-concave na ang ilawom. Kuyaw ang tibook dalan maoy mo-collapse. They should build that retaining wall first,” he said.
Young Builders is doing an 11-meter excavation for the three-basement portion of the building, located between J. Solon’s junctions with Escario Ext. and Archbishop Reyes Ave.
It closed a portion of the road along the construction site “for safety purposes” when construction started last May.
The move, however, did not have the City Government’s approval.
The City Traffic Operations Management (Citom) did not authorize the fencing off of half of the road so that only half of the two-lane street is open to motorists.
The Citom board is set to discuss the violation in its weekly meeting this morning.
Fence permit
Basamot said that Young Builders should have secured a fencing permit and sought approval from the concerned agencies.
He said that the deformed bars with cement overlays that the contractor placed over the J. Solon side of the excavation were not enough to stave off further slides.
He said he reminded Young Builder’s assistant project engineer Roland Araneta and a certain engineer Villareal that the barangay endorsed the project’s environmental compliance certificate application because of the assurance that the company would ensure that everything is in order.
In a press conference yesterday, Mayor Tomas Osmeña told reporters the City is investigating the matter.
“That may be a basis for canceling their (Young Builders) business permit.... We cannot even start construction of the Carbon Market because of their equipment at the market premises,” the mayor said.
He was referring to Young Builders’ refusal to vacate Unit 2 because the City Government did not pay an additional P6 million for additional works the City did not authorize.
Waterfall
“How come they did not inform us? It looks like they were trying to hide the cave-in from us, so it’s being investigated now,” the mayor said.
City Engineer and Building Official Antonio Sanchez and a team from the City Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) inspected the construction site yesterday afternoon.
Sanchez said that aside from ordering the stoppage of the construction, he also instructed Young Builders to explain how it had intended to protect the excavation from landslides.
A City Hall engineer who requested anonymity said it appeared that the contractor’s problem is with the drainage in the area since it was surface water that caused the soil to slide.
“The area where the slide occurred looked like a waterfall during the downpour because of the surface water that overflowed, then it seeped in,” the source said.
Sanchez said he will issue the order to protect the flyover at the Archbishop Reyes and Escario Ext. junction and the J. Solon area.
Complaints
Camputhaw barangay tanods stationed at the nearby Parklane Hotel were tasked to monitor the construction site to ensure that the orders that Sanchez and the barangay sent are strictly observed.
City Councilor Sylvan Jakosalem earlier demanded a public apology from Young Builders for closing a portion of J. Solon without asking for authority from the City, and for it to immediately repair the road.
He said that he received numerous complaints against the construction but just thought that the road closure already had the concurrence of the Citom board.
But when he asked Citom Executive Officer Arnel Tancinco, he learned that Young Builders was not authorized to do so.
Last Sunday, he viewed the construction site from the nearby Parklane Hotel and saw that not only that half of the two-lane road was sealed off, but a third of the width of the road also collapsed because of the excavation. (RHM)
