TRANSCENTRAL Highway will be rehabilitated before the end of the month and before heavy rains come, a legislator assured.
Rep. Pablo John Garcia (Cebu, 3rd district) said the road repair will push through this month, and that he will follow up the status of the project with Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Undersecretary Manuel Bonoan today.
“It will go through a simplified procurement process because it’s in the nature of emergency work,” Garcia said.
The rehabilitation project will no longer go through the procurement process that involves publication of bidding, which usually takes at least a month, he explained.
Last month, DPWH approved the P15-million funding for the rehabilitation works of a 50-meter stretch of the Transcentral Highway.
It will cover the repair and widening of sections of the 32.5-kilometer highway where lanes were reduced to just one or even half the lane due to a cave-in.
A large chunk of the funding will be spent for the widening of the road. The sections where there is a cave-in will be reinforced to prevent further erosion and will then be concreted.
In a letter to DPWH Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane last March, businessman Roberto Aboitiz complained about the condition of the Transcentral Highway, saying that some of the sections are failing, slipping and eroding.
Aboitiz, chairman of the Cebu Industrial Park Developers Inc., pointed out that the highway, which is a key road in Cebu, is in danger of being cut completely, making the trip to Balamban town impossible. In some areas, only half of a lane is passable, he said.
Garcia said that DPWH will limit the rehabilitation work to a remedial or patch-up work because the situation at Transcentral Highway is technically a “design problem.” (JGA)
