BAGUIO CITY – Members of the city council unanimously confirmed the appointment made by Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan for Engr. Nazita Bañes as the permanent department head of the city buildings and architecture office (CBAO)
Engr. Bañes was promoted to her current position as department head after occupying the position of head of the city’s demolition team for nearly 17 years.
She assured city officials the experience she was able to accumulate as head of the city’s demolition team will be used to be able to improve the services of the CBAO, especially in the rationalization of the city’s projects and the build-up of sufficient network among the barangays to guarantee a harmonious working relationship among her staff and barangay officials.
Bañes, who entered the government service in December 1986 and rose from the ranks through the years, called on the city councillors to extend utmost assistance to the CBAO in order to significantly increase the personnel so that they will be able to attend to the enormous requests from the city’s 128 barangays and the city officials for the preparation of cost estimates and programs of works for priority projects.
According to her, CBAO has only three permanent architects and four draftsmen while the other personnel are on project basis, thus, the CBAO is obviously undermanned and unable to cater to the numerous requests from barangay and city officials for the preparation of the necessary documents to support their priority projects.
The new CBAO chief assured city officials that she will put in place the needed system in order to address the issues and concerns in relation to the priorities to be given earnest attention by her office, especially in addressing the backlog of cost estimates and programs of work of barangay-based projects.
She added one of her priorities is to implement the demolition of illegal structures that were built by informal settlers over government properties in order to rid the city of the proliferation of informal settlers that tend to derail the implementation of priority projects of the government within their properties and public lands.
Bañes was appointed to his new position on April 27, 2015 and immediately took her oath before Mayor Domogan on the said date prior to the transmittal of her appointment to the city council for confirmation.
Under existing civil service rules and regulations, appointments made by local chief executives for heads of departments within the concerned local government shall be subject for confirmation by the Sanggunain concerned.
City councillors reminded the new city building official to exercise maximum tolerance in the discharge of her duties and responsibilities in order to satisfy the concerns of parties, especially in the process of demolition.
However, the new CBAO chief claimed the job of head of the city demolition was very difficult because everything must always be considered prior to the implementation of demolition orders and that there was no room for discretion that time considering that they were implementing lawful orders from concerned authorities.
She appealed to city officials and CBAO employees to harmoniously work together for effective discharge of their assigned duties and responsibilities. By Dexter A. See
