BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan ordered the City Engineering Office (CEO) to coordinate with the different offices of the local government and the barangay officials to facilitate the implementation of various horizontal projects that remain unimplemented due to different issues affecting the identified public works projects.
The local chief executive said that one of the aspects of governance that affected the local government’s overall performance in the National Competitiveness ranking is its inability to implement a huge portion of the city’s annual investment plan containing the list of priority projects that were pinpointed by the barangays.
“We need to look into where we failed in the past so that we will work on it to guarantee the implementation of numerous unimplemented horizontal projects in the different barangays of the city for us to be able to achieve our desired state of development,” Domogan stressed.
He said that it is important for concerned offices of the local government to work closely with the barangays so that the projects to be identified and subsequently funded for implementation will not encounter technicalities that will result to the serious delays and even non-implementation of the identified priority development projects in the barangays.
Acting City Engineer Edgar Victor Olpindo admitted that the local government has incurred backlogs in the implementation of various priority development projects that were identified by the different barangays because of serious conflicts in the project sites, insufficient funding for the projects among others.
However, Olpindo claimed that his office is doing its best to look for solutions to the problems that were incurred by the different projects so that the same will be implemented the soonest and for the concerned barangays to benefit from the projects that they were able to identify as their priority pursuant to the city’s annual investment plan.
He explained close coordination with concerned offices of the local government, particularly the City Buildings and Architecture Office (CBAO), City Planning and Development Office and the City Environment and Parks Management Office (CEPMO), will definitely help in convincing the barangays to complete the pertinent requirements in the identification of their priority projects to guarantee the provision of funds for their chosen projects in the future.
Domogan also urged the members of the local legislative body to cooperate with the concerned offices of the local government and the City Development Council (CDC) so that in the identification of their priority projects that will be incorporated in the annual investment plan, the project sites should be free from disputes and that the projects that must be funded must be impact projects to allow the maximum utilization of the available development funds that will be equitably distributed to the priority development projects shortlisted by the CDC for the coming budgeting periods to help in improving the competitiveness of the city in terms of resiliency and infrastructure development.
Under the Local Government code, 20 percent of the annual budgets of local governments should be used to fund the priority development projects prioritized under their annual investment plants approved by their CDCs.
