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Sunday, November 25, 2007
Housing cost in Mandaue rises by P50M
CEBU CITY -- The Barangay Looc medium-rise housing project has gone beyond an urban poor family’s capacity to pay because of additional costs that the Mandaue City Government plans to use the two buildings for other purposes instead.
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To keep the structures safe and environmentally sound, City Hall needs almost 50 percent more of the P103.13-million contract price, which was only for raw land development and building construction.
According to Mayor Jonas Cortes’s technical working group (TWG), indirect costs and construction of roads, canals, and other open spaces development worth about P22.44 million were not included in the contract.
And additional pile-driving works, a wastewater treatment facility, and elevators require P25.7 million more.
The City needs to treat water extracted from the area, which is near the sea, and the elevators to comply with Building Code requirements.
With the additional costs, the project will now be worth P151,273,464.10.
This, said the TWG, means that a 21-square-meter socialized housing unit will already cost P726,900, which an urban poor beneficiary cannot afford.
With this, the City now considers using the two buildings either as the Mandaue City College’s new campus or as evacuation area for calamity victims.
Construction was stopped pending discussion between the City and National Housing Authority (NHA) to use the buildings as school or as temporary shelter.
In a press statement, former mayor Thadeo Ouano accused Mayor Cortes of scrapping the project for political reasons.
Ouano said that in their memorandum of agreement between the City and NHA six years ago, the authority approved the feasibility study and project proposal.
When Cortes assumed office, his technical team noted some lapses in the project.
In particular, the feasibility study submitted to NHA was for a five-story building to be constructed on lot 2-B-2. A soil testing was conducted on the site.
But the contractor reportedly changed the plan to a six-story building on Lot 2-C-2, which is beside the planned site.
The previous administration acquired the lot from the owner through a “swap deal” for 600 poor families. What was built, though, was only good for 208 families.
But Ouano, in the same press release, said the NHA “could not have committed the availability of funds if the project is not deemed financially and technically viable and socially acceptable.”
As of last July 2007, the project was deemed 35.9 percent complete.
Specifically, floor slabs in one building were already laid up to the third floor, and up to the second floor in the second building.
In their last meeting, the NHA asked the city to submit a position paper, which it has yet to give, on the fate of the project.
“Definitely we will finish the project but we will change its purpose,” Cortes had said in reaction to Ouano’s criticism for “abandoning the project.”
The TWG earlier recommended that City Hall forego the plan to utilize the buildings as an urban poor housing site.
It said that expenses for additional basic requirements are being added on top of the original, causing the adjustment in per unit cost. (OCP of Sun.Star Cebu)For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star General Santos. (November 25, 2007 issue)
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