Saturday, August 18, 2007 Go over traffic study, expert urges Tomas
A CEBUANO urban planning expert appealed to Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña not to resort to “character assassination” because he is still considered innocent of a graft charge unless proven otherwise.
So said Dr. Primitivo Cal, a University of the Philippines (UP) professor and urban planning expert, whom Osmeña verbally attacked following his indictment by the Sandi-ganbayan.
The Sandiganbayan ordered the filing of complaints against Cal and three others over the construction of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport terminal 3 in 1996.
Cal, who was Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) undersecretary that time, acted as head of the pre-qualification bids and awards committee (Pbac) that awarded the multi-million project to the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. Inc. (Piatco).
Sandiganbayan
The Sandiganbayan said the contract entered into by the government was “grossly disadvantageous,” and charged Cal and his companions for choosing Piatco even when they knew that the consortium did not have adequate funds to undertake the project.
Good faith
Cal, though, was not worried about the indictment, which he welcomed because it means they could now defend themselves in court.
“We are confident that the Pbac members and the Chair of the Technical Working Group will be exonerated as we all acted in good faith, with the interest of the Government in mind,” he said.
Appeal
“The trial has not even started and yet Tommy is already talking as if I have already been convicted of the charge,” he lamented through an e-mail sent to Sun.Star Cebu.
He appealed to the mayor to just go over the merits of his recommendations when businessmen tapped his services to study the viability of the proposed Gov. Cuenco Ave.-A.S. Fortuna St. flyover.
“In a democracy and our system of justice, people are considered innocent until proven guilty. The (Sandiganbayan) case and my study are unrelated. I ask Mayor Osmeña to look into the merits of my Gov. Cuenco Ave. traffic engineering study rather than resort to character assassination,” he said.
Last Wednesday, Os-meña attacked Cal’s reliability as an expert.
Enmity
“So, whose opinion do you think matters? (That of) somebody who is being indicted by the Sandiganbayan or that of the mayor?” he said during a press conference.
The mayor’s enmity against Cal started in 1989, when Osmeña fired him from the Metro Cebu Development Project over a disagreement.
He earlier said that he just gave the best solutions he saw when his help was sought.
He said the flyover is inadequate and would be saturated two to three years after its construction Cal said that what is needed is a four-lane divided flyover to accommodate the number of vehicles.
He also proposed the widening of the road from the Foodland Complex to the University of San Carlos-Technological Center to accommodate more northbound vehicles.
Instead of a flyover, Cal suggested that Gov. Cuenco Ave. be widened to a six-lane divided highway; improving layouts of the Mahiga (J. Panis St.) and Foodland intersections and the reconstruction of Mahiga Bridge to provide a six-lane divided road.
“It is regrettable that the timing of our indictment might have a bad impact on your cause to stop the flyover,” Cal said in his letter to the businessmen who asked him to conduct an assessment of the proposed flyover. (RHM)
