Wednesday, October 03, 2007 Easy on demolition, Tomas says
CEBU City Mayor Tomas Osmeña wants the vice mayor and councilors to be selective when removing shanties from the riverbanks, since evicting all dwellers could cause problems for the City Government.
Osmeña warned it will be difficult to remove all shanties that run into thousands, and the City should evict only those that are most risky.
As of last count, the Cebu City Disaster Coordinating Council (CCDCC) identified some 2,500 houses and structures along major rivers and creeks that need to be removed as they could be washed away by floodwaters.
Last week, Vice Mayor Michael Rama urged barangay officials to exercise political will in removing structures from flood-prone areas despite a possible backlash on their candidacy in the coming barangay elections.
“The vice mayor is bent on really removing all of the houses but I think they should be very selective. You can’t remove all 10,000, maybe you can remove 200 or 300 but not all thousands of them,” he said yesterday.
Breakers
In his news conference, the mayor proposed to use the “geo-textile” technology and wave breakers in the rivers to prevent landslides and flooding in some areas.
He earlier proposed the construction of mini dikes in flood-prone areas but other technologies may be used, depending on the area.
“Geo-textile” is a cloth-like technology that holds the sand together but allows water to pass through, and can help prevent mudslides and heavy flooding.
Wave breakers or the jackstone-shaped concrete structure can be used to dissipate the rushing current and break it into little whirlpools, the mayor said.
The breakers could be placed in critical areas of the rivers to control the flow of water, the mayor suggested.
Both technology are being used at the South Road Properties (SRP) and have proven to work in breaking huge waves.
Although it will be cheaper to use the wave breakers, which cost around P2,000 each at the time they were made for the SRP, transporting these to the mountain barangays could be a problem.
“Geo-textile is more expensive. It’s cheap to make these jackstones but the problem is, how do you deliver them to the barangays? They’re very heavy and they have a tendency to interlock,” Osmeña said. (LCR)
