The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) assured the Provincial Government that the concreting of the Southern Palawan road would not be affected even if a new administration would take over on June 30.
The concreting of the south road was under Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s El Nido to Bataraza road project which she mentioned during her state of the nation address in 2008.
“There will be no problem even if a new administration would take over because the project has a contract,” Engr. Ricardo Mañalac of DPWH said during the Provincial Board’s question and answer hour on May 25.
He also pointed that the funds would not be a problem because the budget for the project was already allocated. However, Mañalac admitted that the project was short of budget because of the P400 million still unreleased by the Department of Budget and Management.
For the south road project, the national government allotted a P1.8-billion fund but according to the DPWH, only P1.4 billion had been so far released.
The DPWH said they have no idea why the remaining P400 million was still not released.
“Although we’re ahead of schedule, June 30 is not a realistic date (for finishing the project) because of some problems we encountered. We’re just deferring the construction until the budget is enough,” Mañalac pointed.
He added that the “contractor is hesitant to deliver the cement requirements because of lack of funds.”
Under the contract, the project should be completed on Nov. 30 this year. Mañalac said that they were confident to finish the road concreting on schedule as long as the funds would be available at the soonest possible time.
DPWH’s project status report showed that as of May 20, 2010 , 82 percent of the project had been finished. However, the contractor is still doing miscellaneous works which require going back to some already concreted areas.
No comments:
Post a Comment