Wednesday, September 19, 2007 No response on Tomas offer
THE controversial decorative lampposts dotting at least three Cebu City streets are deteriorating and are without power supply.
But Mayor Tomas Osmeña has yet to receive a reply to his offer for City Hall to repair them and pay for its electricity consumption.
“That is a real tragedy but I’m not getting any response from anybody. Even the COA has not responded,” the mayor told a news conference yesterday.
He said the best solution to the situation is for the Office of the Ombudsman to resolve the controversy fast and “kick out those responsible for the mess.”
Osmeña said that because of the delay in the investigation, “nobody wants to touch it.”
Unpaid bills
He earlier said that the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) 7 is remiss in its task to turn over the 360 decorative lampposts along Salinas Drive, Veterans Drive and S. Osmeña Blvd. to the City for maintenance.
Unpaid electricity bills have prompted the Visayan Electric Co. to cut off power supply to the lampposts, which were installed for the 12th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit last January.
Osmeña has announced that the City will acquire ownership of the lamps and replace damaged units for the sake of hotels and commercial establishments that benefit from it.
The roads leading to the hotels have been well lit since the lampposts were installed last December.
Yesterday, the mayor said he has been complaining about the lampposts, which are no longer working.
“It’s really sayang (a waste). It’s going to be sayang.... I’m willing to try to salvage what’s left of it (lampposts),” he said.
Osmeña said that once the City takes ownership of the lighting facilities, it would change its interior because the lamps consume too much electricity.
Not durable
And they are also “not durable” and the interior appears to be substandard and cheap, he said.
Last April, City Planning Officer Nigel Paul Villarete computed that the electricity bill for the 640 lamps in the city from December 2006 to March 2007 alone could cost the City some P1 million.
He had computed that a 12-hour use of each lamp a day would cost the City P513 in monthly electricity consumption.
The City would have to spend P328,320 a month, or P3.9 million a year, in power use expenditure. (RHM)
