THE District Engineering Office (DEO) of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has assured the public that it will declog the drainage on major roads to prevent floods during the rainy season.
Alberto Quiblat Jr, of the weather bureau Pagasa had said they expected the rains to arrive in June.
Aside from declogging, Joe Gauran, chief of the DPWH-DEO in Cebu City, said they are also connecting drainage systems to waterways like the one that runs under M.J. Cuenco Ave. and T. Padilla and Logarta Streets, where parents and pupils of the Tejero Elementary School as well as students of nearby Cebu Technological University are forced to wade in knee-deep water during the rainy season.
The area has two creeks, one along Bonifacio St. and one along Logarta St., which are immediately emptied after a downpour, while the roads are submerged in water for several hours.
Gauran said the funding for decloging is covered by their annual maintenance fund, which can be released immediately.
However, the widening of a drainage is a separate project and is subject for allocation under DPWH’s 2020 General Appropriations Act, he said.
Meanwhile, the Project Management Office of the DPWH’s central office handles the widening of creeks and other waterways.
“I think our DPWH central office has an ongoing project to widen all creeks passing the cities of Cebu and Mandaue,” Gauran said. (EOB)