The slashed budget request of the Cebu provincial government’s rehabilitation task force also meant a reduction in the amount set aside for houses to be built for typhoon victims in northern Cebu.
From the initial P250,000, a single housing unit will now have to be constructed within a P70,000 budget, Task Force Paglig-on chief Baltazar Tribunalo said.
Tribunalo said they lowered the amount after a review of the rehabilitation plan as ordered by Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III.
The governor ordered a review and recalculation of the budget to make it “more realistic”.
With the scaled-down budget, he said more houses would be built.
“As far as our request here in the province is concerned, we tried to make sure that it won’t be that expensive so that more people will benefit because more housing units will be built,” Tribunalo told reporters yesterday.
Design
From P26.8 billion, Cebu is now asking Malacañang to allocate P9.4 billion to bankroll the rehabilitation of towns flattened by supertyphoon Yolanda.
More than P23 billion of the original rehabilitation plan was supposed to be used for houses and resettlement areas followed by the cost of its implementation at P1.2 billion.
Tribunalo said the houses will still be disaster-resilient despite being built at a lower price.
He said they modified the design of the model houses to reduce the cost without sacrificing the quality of the structure.
From the planned two-story concrete houses based on designs provided by the National Housing Authority (NHA), they are now finalizing three proposed designs of model houses for the typhoon survivors.
Progressive shelter
The “progressive shelter” design based on proposals submitted by a team from the University of San Carlos-College of Architecture and Fine Arts (CAFA) features walls built from coco lumber with concrete base.
The Interlocking Compressed Earth Block (ICEB) design will be constructed out of specially-produced concrete blocks and galvanized iron for its roof.
The third design from the Provincial Engineer’s Office (PEO) will require concrete and GI sheets.
Each of the three designs will cost P60,000 and will fall within the task force’s budget for a single housing unit, Tribunalo said.
“Our basis before was NHA’s two-story design which was much bigger but when we checked the budget, it turned out that with the NHA’s design, less people can be housed due to financial constraints. Now it’s more on redesigning and the availability of the budget,” Tribunalo said.
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