All smelly: Sabangan, Sagada road projects, fish market, autonomy

HAPPY WEEKEND

Gina Dizon

SAGADA, Mountain Province -- It is really amusing how a tourism road project with guidelines to connect one municipality to the other will not reach the intended location.

The P100 million Sabangan-Sagada tourism road can only reach four to five kilometers starting from Madepdeppas, Sabangan town towards Sagada. Estimate from the Department of Public Works and Highways indicate the P100 million does not even reach an inch of Taccong located within Sagada territory. That road project should have been called Sabangan-Sabangan road.

The rest is history with top politicians interfering in what was supposed to be a tourism road connecting a tourist center with tourism accommodation facilities located nearby. It is ironic to find no tourist spot along the Madepdeppas area as noted by the inspection composite team of the Department of Tourism and DPWH. And worse, it does not connect to the tourist town of Sagada.

The rest is history with frustrating and smelly political calisthenics which finally led to the bidding and awarding to the winner-contractor, and implementation of the project.   There are now three construction companies implementing the project and who cares about sub- contracting? The problem is when illegal sub- contractors shall not accommodate sub-contractors looking for work.

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The fish market in Sagada smells.  Maybe  Robert Bayo Construction can explain how a  P300,000 fish market  composed of  cheap  transparent  green roof,  four steel posts, and  a display platform costs  P300,000  and perhaps  satisfy  my imagination that this amount can even construct a  modest house.  I guess the Commission on Audit can say something about this fish market with apparent substandard materials. 

Local resident Diasen Timpac must have thought the  attached roof of the market was strong enough to hold him when he got down from a window to retrieve a P1,000 bill. It was not.

The roof of the newly constructed fish market attached to the main market building constructed early this year gave way that got him falling some 10 feet below injuring his head and arm. He was sent to the Luis Hora Memorial Hospital in Bauko town for CT scan.  

The cheap transparent green roof is part of materials and labor of the fish market costing P300,000 sourced from the  P500,000 Priority Development Assistance Fund of Sen. Chiz Escudero given to the local government unit here. The remaining P200,000 was used to construct the Kilong satellite market.  

Meantime, vendors located near the fish market complained of drainage problems with no drainage pipes, no sink and no water facilities at the fish market.

Also, the fish market’s selling area measuring some 12 square meters has no constructed space to accommodate the vendor while attending  to  customers.

Construction of the attached fish market was won in the bidding by Robert Bayo Construction.    

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The P36 million Boasaw waterworks smells worse. Time check. It’s already August 2013 and you  don’t see an inch of a pipe reaching the  Poblacion since the 10- month project was won by Cotabato-based  contractor FFJJ construction December of 2011  and  implemented  February of 2012.

Is the source of the P18 million fund – Sen.Teofisto Guingona 111- interested to know? Or not? Perhaps the CHARMP2 who gave P18 million of the total cost of P36 million would care to know how far the project reached.  By the way, I don’t see a face of someone who looks like he is from Mindanao-based FFJJ Construction supervising the project.

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This campaign for regional autonomy is real boring. I am pessimistic with this unpopular political move going to die a natural death with the public passive on what regional autonomy is all about.

The Cordillerans with their bored silence had already enough of two denials of plebiscites on this campaign only insisted by a few. The regional administrative set up is already enough and good enough.

Unless the political system is going to be changed, there could be some meaningful changes for a Cordillera autonomous system. With national laws dictating the system, what are chances of a regional autonomous setup to control its own natural resources?