The anchor for the Regional Development Council’s (RDC) lukewarm reception—not a few would say outright rejection—of the tunnel proposal of Rep. Raul del Mar of Cebu City’s north district lies in a statement from businessman Glenn Soco, RDC Infrastructure committee chairman.
“Although we welcome these projects, we have to be careful on picking them. The right ones entail the least cost and inconvenience to the public. We have to base everything on a masterplan which we should have 30 years ago,” Soco said in a phone interview.
That master plan on dealing with traffic bottlenecks was supposed to have been funded under the auspices of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and is being heavily promoted by the Metro Cebu Development Board, a partnership of Metro Cebu officials and businessmen also being branded as Mega Cebu.
As anyone who’s been keeping tabs on Metro Cebu developments know by now, the current Cebu City Hall administration isn’t too keen about following the group and would rather insist on dealing with other Metro Cebu local governments on its own terms and not on anyone else.
But it’s not just about refusing to follow the lead of some movers and shakers that is at the core of this RDC blockade of projects despite the insistence of Soco and RDC chairman Kenneth Cobonpue that they’re not blocking projects, just requiring compliance with procedure and “sequencing” in implementation.
It’s been said that the RDC leadership is being influenced by Presidential Assistant to the Visayas Michael Dino, an arch critic of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, owing to the fact that both Dino and Cobonpue were former high school classmates.
And Dino’s ties with the business community may have also established his connection with Soco, a Mandaue City based businessman.
On opposing the tunnel projects of del Mar—the congressman merely adjusted his proposal from his previous underpass initiative in hopes of securing the P16 billion funding from the national government—the RDC said it wants less capital intensive projects like flared intersections first before moving on to big ticket projects.
We wonder whether by opposing del Mar’s projects the RDC can find ways to secure funding for major projects should the need for them arise.
It is a recommendatory agency after all and their recommendations may or may not carry weight to agencies like the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) who remain dependent on Congress for funding.
As things stand, the RDC leadership appears hell bent on imposing and dictating the flow of projects in Cebu City and Mandaue City for the sake of “sequencing” the implementation of the master plan over and above the initiatives planned by Metro Cebu’s local governments.