‘Concrete storm’ for roads in upland villages

Close to P600 million worth of road concreting projects connecting Cebu City’s upland barangays are scheduled to be bidded out this month, an official said yesterday.

“It will be ‘road concreting storm’ for the mountain barangays,” said  Jose Daluz III, who heads the Technical Working Group of the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) for Infrastructure.

Cebu City has at least 31 mountain barangays.

The standard width for mountain barangay roads is five meters with a side ditch for drainage.

The standard cost by the Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) is P10 to P12 million per kilometer of road concreting.

“The idea is to have these projects bidded out within the month. All of these will be endorsed to BAC Infra for bidding. We target to award the project to the winning contractor by June and actual civil works can start by July,” said City Engineer Jose Marie Poblete.

These projects were charged to the budget of the DEPW  for this year.

Pipeline
There’s no need to ask the City Council for approval since  these projects were specified  in the annual budget, Poblete.

“We are fast tracking these projects,” he said.

“The barangay officials have also been following up these projects,” Poblete said.

A backlog of other  infrastructure projects identified from previous years have not yet been fully implemented by the DEPW.

Poblete said some of these projects funded from budget allocations of previous years are still in the pipeline.

They are pending approval in the City Council since these  were charged to lump sum allocations in previous years.

Cebu CIty Mayor Michael Rama, who signed the Approved Budget for Contract of the 38 road concreting projects in the mountain barangays, welcomed the development.

“We are passionate in building and there will be no stopping while we are running this administration. It will be a real storm of infrastructure,” Rama told reporters yesterday.