ANGELES CITY -- The whole stretch of the Fil-Am Friendship Highway will soon have state-of-the-art LED (light-emitting diode) street lamps.

This development came after Road Board Executive Diector Adolfo Escalona yesterday (October 23) met with Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan at the latter’s office in City Hall.

Escalona informed the mayor that the Road Board, the government’s steward for the objective of utilization of the Motor Vehicle Users Charge (MVUC), will fund the installation of street lamps from Kilometer 85 + 994, which is 4-kilometer long from the heart of Angeles City to the tollgate of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEX), as Phase 1 of the entire project.

The project shall be undertaken by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

According to Pamintuan, the city government will soon enter into a Memorandum of Agreement with the DPWH, where “we [LGU], shall secure and undertake repair and maintenance of the project after implementation.”

He added that apart from shouldering the electric and other related bills, the city government will also re-install and use, within its territorial jurisdiction, any lamppost that may have been removed from the project.

"The lighting of the entire stretch of the Fil-AM Friendship Highway represents just one part of our plan to brighten up Angeles City. Soon we will work on lighting up the MacArthur Highway with our ‘Project Triple Lighting’ which we will do in cooperation with national government agencies such as the Road Board, DPWH and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, and the private sector," Pamintuan said.