BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan questioned the education department’s central office for insisting to implement uniform project plans and specifications for schoolbuildings in the different public elementary and high schools in the city which are not appropriate to the situation in the locality and in violation of the approved comprehensive master development of the said schools.
The local chief executive claimed the local government continuously receive negative reports from school officials regarding the questionable design of school structures being implemented by the education department which does not conform with the context of the city being a mountain area with a different climatic condition. The said programs and project specifications are only suitable for lowland areas and not for the mountainous terrain in the city and other parts of the Cordillera.
“Education officials should be mindful on the plight of local government and school officials from mountain regions like the Cordillera that the uniform designs being prepared in the central office are only suitable for the lowland conditions and not for the mountainous terrain in the region. We have raised the matter previously to a number of education officials but it seems the said concern have fell on deaf ears,” Domogan stressed.
Earlier, school officials of the Irisan National High School aired their grievance against a project being implemented by the education department’s central office within the school compound that seem unsuitable for the limited land area of the school and affecting the comprehensive master development plan of the school.
According to him, the education department’s uniform design for schoolbuildings needs an allocation of P1.5 million per structure but in the case of the city, the said budget will not be sufficient because of the excavation, provision of slope protection, and other interventions to ensure the structural integrity of the proposed structures.
He disclosed the problem of the city and regional offices of the education department on the project plans and specifications emanating from the central office without consultations with the concerned offices had been raised by local officials with Education Secretary Leonor Briones in the past but no concrete action has been done to address the valid concern of project implementors and recipients on the ground.
Domogan argued the project plans and specifications of school building projects in the lowlands is totally different from the prescribed project plans and specifications of similar structures in mountainous areas like Baguio city and the Cordillera because of the hauling of aggregates from the source to the project site, the distance from the source to the project site, and other necessary works that entail added cost over and above the earmarked allocation.
He revealed that the failure of the central office to consider the plight of school officials on the ground will definitely result to the virtual mutilation of the comprehensive master development plans of schools and the non-completion of structures that will be built aside from their questionable structural integrity. By Dexter A. See
