Albay governor says he sees overprice in dredging

15 June 2007

LEGAZPI CITY—ALBAY GOV. FERNANDO GON-zalez has questioned as “likely overpriced” the multimillion-peso dredging and earth-diking projects in the province and the P20-million repair of the city airport by the Department of Public Works and Highways.

The DPWH-Bicol has 67 ongoing initial rehabilitation projects in Albay amounting to more than P1.4 billion.

A total of P655 million, the biggest share, was allotted for 30 projects of dredging, river-channelization, and earth-dike construction in three districts, a report furnished the governor by the DPWH stated.

Other projects involved the repair, improvement, and construction of roads amounting to P581 million; reconstruction and replacement of bridges, P74.8 million; and rehabilitation of dikes and river control facilities, P79 million.

Gonzalez said he was against the dredging activities since they only offered temporary solutions to lahar and flooding hazards around Mt. Mayon.

“What we need are permanent flood-control facilities and not dredging and collapsible earth-dikes, which will all be useless when heavy rains come,” he said.

He added that the wise spending of public funds by the DPWH should be a question to ask by the public since “the amounts allotted for the projects were incredible.”

Cost of dredging and earth-diking projects ranged from P4 million to P40 million.

Based on records obtained by Gonzalez as to the status of the projects as of April 25, a dredging project in San Francisco River Channel, Guinobatan, Albay, was 75.8 percent completed, with the whole programmed amount of P30.1 million released already.

It was a negotiated contract, meaning there was no bidding.

Another project is the rehabilitation and rechannelization of Lower Padang Earthdike in Padang, this city, under a negotiated contract worth P28.5 million. Some P30 million was released as of April 25, with 36.5-percent completion.

Still another project was the P28.5-million rechannelling of Yawa River under a negotiated contract. As of April 25, it was 34.69-percent completed.

Orlando Roces, DPWH regional director in Bicol, told the Inquirer that the dredging activities were necessary and were even recommended by the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council and the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

“Some people doubt if we are doing the right thing, but we first had to remove the volcanic debris deposited in the rivers and redefine river channels before we could put up solid structures like permanent flood-control facilities,” Roces said.

He added that the DPWH had to identify the “weak points” of the river channels that could collapse. These will be where the permanent flood-control structures will be built, he said.

Roces said the amount allotted for dredging was reasonable and depended on the length and width of the rivers, and the volume of debris deposits. Ephraim Aguilar, Inquirer Southern Luzon