Contractors slam body set to monitor contracts

BAGUIO CITY – The creation of a Regional Project Monitoring Office (RPM0) for the controversial State of the Nation Address projects of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the Cordillera is just an added layer of bureaucracy which would contribute in the further delays in the completion of the projects before the end of this year.

This was bared by some concerned contractors and regional DPWH officials, who claimed the sudden birth of the new office is simply “too late in the day” and would not help the cause to please the President with bloated reports on the accomplishments of SONA projects which are considered to be way behind schedule.

At the same time, they claimed the undue interference being made by self-proclaimed anti-graft crusaders and poorly equipped monitoring teams is adding insult to injury because Palace and DPWH officials are being fed with mixed up details and information that prompts them to issue allegedly ill-advised decisions.

According to them, the project implementors of the SONA projects in Mountain province and Kalinga cannot actually complete most of their warded projects on the deadline set by the President because of the reported involvement of too many decision-makers on the field which lead to further confusion on which orders will be followed.

Worst, interest groups and politicians reportedly dipping their fingers on the implementation of the projects with threats of exposing supposed irregularities are just complicating the situation when all have supposed to be gone smooth if not for such interferences.

The national government has earmarked P5.3 billion for the implementation of the SONA commitments of the President in the cordillera, which includes the P1.8 billion rehabilitation of the Mount Data to Bontoc and Bontoc to Banaue sections of the Halsema Highway known as phases two and three, respectively and the P3.3 billion upgrading of the Bontoc to Tinglayan boundary and Tinglayan boundary to Tabuk sections of the Bontoc-Tabuk-Tuguegarao road.

If the DPWH is really sincere in ensuring the completion of all the SONA projects on the deadline set by the President, they must mobilize the active participation of the concerned district offices to closely monitor and supervise the works and not allow undue interference to influence their judgment on how the projects are being handled by their field personnel.

Construction industry stakeholders in the region agreed with the earlier declaration of the President in her visit here that constructing mountain highways are very challenging engineering-wise, thus, it is not easy to simply hurl degrading allegations and accusations of corruption against anyone if it could not be proven that defects in the infrastructure projects are due to corruption or such defects could be corrected in the course of the project implementation.

The SONA project monitoring office would just result to the further depletion of personnel in the various DPWH regional offices and district areas because it is empowered to pullout personnel which would compromise the implementation of other priority projects of the agency which also have their respective deadlines, thus, such office should be dissolved at the soonest possible time.