MANKAYAN, Benguet – Thousands of residents living in two remote villages in northern Benguet not accessible with good quality roads will enjoy the fruits of development with the expected construction and paving of the roads leading to their communities in the next two years.
Benguet Caretaker Congressman and Anti-Crime and Terrorism through Community Involvement and Support (ACT-CIS) Party-list Rep. Eric Go Yap disclosed he sourced the required funding for the construction of roads leading to Tacadang, Kibungan and Kayapa, Bakun which will be included as part of the recently approved P4.5 trillion annual budget of the national government next year.
He claimed that from the initial P100 million each that had been earlier earmarked for the 2 major road opening projects under the budget of the public works department, he was able to increase the funds to P200 million each for the said projects during the bicameral conference committee because he wants people to have direct access to basic government services through the established road networks.
However, Congressman Yap said the initial wave of funds will be solely used for the road opening leading to the two remote villages while the budget for the concreting of the aforesaid roads will be included as part of the funds to be provided to the public works department under the proposed annual budget for 2022 to ensure that residents in the said places will be linked to the urban and rural areas in their respective municipalities.
Tacadang and Kayapa have been known as among the major producers of high-grade marijuana over the past several decades primarily because of the difficulty of having to manually transport their vegetable produce to the market.
Congressman Yap, who regularly visited the 2 remote villages using his chopper, revealed he personally interacted with residents in the said places and he understands their present predicament on having to produce the illegal hemp which can be easily transported and commands a higher buying price compared to heavily investing in producing vegetables but having difficulty in ferrying the same to the nearest road network, and subsequently transporting the said crops to the market without certainty on the prevailing buying prices.
According to the lawmaker, development will flourish in the different parts of the province once the road networks are in place so that people can conveniently move around for economic activities and sources of livelihood.
He asserted he will personally make sure the initial wave of funds will be used to open the roads leading to the 2 villages for villagers to immediately use these once the infrastructure projects are completed and the concreting and other major works will simply follow soon in the 2022 budget because residents are really in dire need of roads to be able to have their own share of development and other economic activities that will help in improving their living condition in the countryside. By HENT