Friday, April 11, 2008 PJ to visit DPWH on fund release
REP. Pablo John Garcia (Cebu, 3rd district) will visit Department of Public Works and Highway (DPWH) Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. in a bid to hasten the release of P15 million for the repair of sections of the Transcentral Highway.
Balamban Mayor Alex Binghay, meanwhile, said the defective highway is preventing investors from coming in to the northwestern part of Cebu, particularly in Balamban town.
Garcia said the DPWH 3rd engineering district sent the program of works and estimates of the Transcentral Highway repair to the DPWH central office three months ago (not three weeks ago as reported yesterday).
Garcia, in a radio dyLA interview, said that apart from rehabilitation, some sections of the highway also need to be widened.
Longer route
Binghay said they can do nothing but wait for the allocation from the national government for the repair of highway. He said tourists and foreign investors now have to take the Toledo-Naga road, a longer route, since parts of the highway are no longer safe.
Binghay said they also asked local DPWH officials to repair the damaged sections of the Transcentral Highway, but they were unresponsive.
Businessman Roberto Aboitiz wrote Ebdane to ask DPWH to repair damaged sections of the road before these worsen.
Aboitiz, in his letter to Ebdane last March 13, noted that some Japanese investors and other foreign guest have to take the Toledo-Naga road going to Balamban town because of the serious problems on sections of the highway.
“Of late, however, many sections of the Transaxial Highway are failing, slipping and eroding. There are many areas even where the road pavement is literally floating,” said Aboitiz.
In Cebu City Hall, Mayor Tomas Osmeña said that instead of restoring eroded sections of the highway, DPWH should move the road inward where erosion is unlikely to occur.
Osmeña said some parts of the highway on the Cebu City side are unstable, and are better concreted rather than asphalted.
In his news conference yesterday, the mayor said DPWH should learn from the way former Cebu governor Lito Osmeña planned the construction of the highway,
specifically on how he avoided areas that are likely to erode.
Like a robot
“They just have to fix it, what can I say?... DPWH’s style is if there is a landslide area, they just restore it but what Lito Osmeña did was make the road go more inland,
which is cheaper. If you observe DPWH, they will try to fix it, that’s why it costs P15 million. But maybe if you go around the landslide area it will not be P15 million” said the mayor.
“But unsaon ta man, that’s the way they think. Murag robot ba, they just follow instructions,” Osmeña continued.
In Barangay Pungol Sibugay and other parts of the mountain barangays where land is unstable, he said the City Government learned it is better to use concrete in paving
the roads instead of asphalt.
While asphalt looks better, the land underneath could erode without the motorists knowing it.
“In an unstable area and under those conditions, it should not be asphalted. It should be concreted because asphalt is inflexible. It looks nice but underneath, you don’t know that there’s no earth,” Osmeña added. (GMD/LCR)
