LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – Municipal officials raised concern on the alleged failure of the Department of Public Works and Highways – First Benguet Engineering District (DPWH-FBED) to act on issues and concerns being brought to their attention relative to the ongoing construction of the overpass along Km. 5 and the concreting projects from Km. 3 to Km. 5 that might impact on the province’s hosting of major crowd drawing events in the next several weeks.
Mayor Romeo K. Salda expressed disappointment on the failure of the DPWH-FBED to send their representatives to coordination meetings being organized by the local government to discuss pertinent issues and concerns being raised relative to the ongoing projects as if they are evading their supposed responsibility over the implementation of the major infrastructure projects right at the heart of the municipality.
Benguet, particularly La Trinidad, will be hosting this year’s Cordillera Administrative Region Athletic Association (CARAA) regional sports competition which is scheduled on February 23-28, 2025 while the town’s major crowd drawing festival, the annual Strawberry festival, is slated by the middle of next month.
“We need concrete actions from the implementing agency on the issues and concerns being raised against the projects being implemented in the municipality. We cannot accept the simple reason that the delays in the completion of the major works on the said projects is due to the lack of manpower when it is the obligation of the DPWH-FBED to make sure that the contractors that will be tapped to do the works are competent in handling their awarded projects,” Mayor Salda stressed.
He challenged the DPWH-FBED and the contractors working on the aforesaid projects to come up with acceptable explanations on the serious delays in the completion of their works because the public had already suffered too much from the monstrous traffic congestions caused by the delayed implementation of the existing works.
According to him, people understand the delays in the implementation of the projects if they are able to see that the contractors are doing their best to implement the necessary works on the said projects but they do not tolerate obvious insensitivity on their part by blatantly and deliberately failing to deploy the desirable number of individuals to work on the said projects.
The local chief executive pointed out that the agency and the contractors should work double time to address the primary causes of the monstrous traffic congestions before the start of the crowd drawing events that will be conducted in the province because the local government does not want to be placed in a bad light for problems that are caused by the insensitivity and inaction of concerned agencies that are not within the preview of the powers of the municipality.
Concerned motorists claimed that the fast-paced implementation of the said projects at the start was just actually for a show because the real performance of the project implementers became evident when the projects were on their middle stages where there were evident inadequate personnel working on the said projects among others.
What made the situation worst is the daily sufferings of the people as the travel time from the capital town to Baguio City and vice versa reached approximately two hours before improving to about an hour and a half to date. By Dexter A. See
