Corruption-ridden Halsema Highway

HAPPY WEEKEND
Gina Dizon

While typhoon Pepeng was raging towards northern Luzon, Mountain Province was declared one of the provinces under state of calamity due to Typhoon Ondoy. The recent typhoon with its disastrous heavy rains poured along the stretch of Halsema Highway which connects Mountain Province and the premier city of Baguio causing landslides on the road that rendered commuters untold suffering.

It was a year ago when the house of a 72 year old woman was buried during a landslide along the Halsema due to the onslaught of Typhoon Karen. We are also reminded of truck driver Winston Pawid and other unfortunate souls who lost their lives in accidents caused by landslides or faulty breaks along the dangerous and circuitous highway.

The rugged and dangerous Halsema Highway claimed a number of lives through the years, which earned its label as the World’s 3rd Scariest Highway, according to Travel and Leisure. (http://www.travelandleisure.com/slideshows/worlds-scariest-roads)

Life and Leisure says, “Like many under-maintained mountain roads, landslides are a hazard on the Halsema Highway, where big stones and debris tumble from peaks and along with the cloud forests comes mist that can ruin visibility. Many sections remain unpaved.”

Up to this time, many sections remain unpaved despite funds which have already been allotted to the rehabilitation of the battered highway since 2006 for the 2nd phase beginning at Mt Data, Bauko to the capital town of Bontoc.

The first 84-kilometer section costing P1 billion upgraded the highway from La Trinidad to Mount Data and completed in 2006. While it also faced issues of corruption involving some politicians, the project was substantially finished by Korea’s DAEWOO Engineering and Construction.

And facing issues of corruption still, rehabilitation of the 51-km stretch from Mount Data to Bontoc with a budget of P1 billion and the 45-km section from Bontoc to Banaue costing 864 million under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) project, is desperately ongoing.

Now on its third year of implementation, the second phase of the SONA project remains to be gasping for completion with only 31% completion rate. The rest of the 70% is projected to be finished before the May elections in 2010. Yet with the way how things are going, expect the completion to be finished years more than that.By that time, President Gloria Arroyo is president no more. It would be another round of complaints of corruption in a State where corruption in government breeds like mad.

Meantime, the recent torching of P30 million worth of construction materials used along some portions of the Baguio-Bontoc road, allegedly by elements of the New Peoples’ Army, is another set back to the timely construction of the battered road. Yet, skeptics say the torching must have been done by disgruntled persons who were not able to get their kickbacks from the project’s funds.

Regardless of the torching, complaints of corruption continue the new DPWH management. In the mid year 2009, the President’s SONA project has undergone another investigation by the Presidential Management staff and the Commission on Audit following complaints of corruption ranging from substandard materials used bloated costs of materials to slippages allegedly committed by contractors who were awarded contracts by DPWH.

The Commission on Audit started an investigation of the 180-kilometer Halsema Highway, following reports from Volunteers against Corruption (VAC) led by Juniper Dominguez, local churches, the Social Action Development Center (SADC) of the Catholic Diocese of Bontoc (Mt. Province) and Lagawe (Ifugao), and the Episcopal Diocese of Kalinga, that corruption plagued the priority project.

Hermogenes Esperon Jr., chief of the Presidential Management Staff and COA Chairman Reynaldo Villar authorized the investigation to determine the issues preventing the highway’s completion, reports said.

Thomas Killip, presidential assistant on Cordillera affairs and the COA regional office inspected the P5.5.billion Mt. Province section of the highway, earlier reports say.

DPWH-CAR faces two major complaints of alleged corruption within a span of three years on the second phase of the SONA project along the Halsema Highway.

Earlier in 2006, charges of corruption were slapped on the Department of Public Works and Highways in 2007 under the leadership of then DPWH Regional Director Engineer Mariano Alquiza. This led to the investigation by the Presidential Management Staff and the Commission on Audit in 2008. Somehow the investigation led to the transfer of Alquiza to Region 1 on December 2008. The investigation yielded defects in the implementation of the project which newly installed DPWH-CAR Director Engineer Roy Manao admitted.

The national government allotted P5.2 billion in the last three years for the rehabilitation and upgrading of the Mount Data-to-Bontoc, the Bontoc-to-Banaue sections, and the Bontoc-Tabuk-Tuguegarao road.

As we await when the Halsema Highway shall finally be finished, commuters continue to experience landslides which lead them to get stranded for hours along the road rendering unbearable anxiety and weariness. The public cannot do anything but wait and groan unless they incessantly press their complaints and demands to the DPWH and contractors to make good the projects’ completion so that these be finished as soon as possible.