TALES OF WASTED FUNDS IN ILOILO AND CEBU CITY

"IT was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." The famous opening lines of Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" are apt, even if this tale is about Pavia and Cebu City, rather than Paris and London, even if we are in the age of information technology and not the age of the French Revolution.

We, the public, rely on the wisdom of decision-makers to plan and execute programs and projects that benefit the community and improve lives. Foolishness, however, results, again and again, in an incredible waste of public funds. Among the more glaring examples are the Ungka Flyover in Iloilo and the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC), both undertakings having hogged headlines in local media for some time.

The P680-million Ungka Flyover in Barangay Ungka 2, Pavia, just outside Iloilo City, is funded by the national government. Then senator Franklin Drilon envisioned that the flyover would lessen travel time between bustling Metro Iloilo and the Iloilo International Airport. The contract between International Builders Corp. and the Department of Public Works and Highways was signed in March 2020. By June 2022, two of the four lanes of the 453.7-meter-long flyover were opened to vehicles. On September 6, all four lanes were opened. However, motorists reported experiencing a "wavy sensation" when they crossed the flyover. Consequently, it was closed on September 18.

Pavia's municipal council on December 12 passed a resolution calling for an investigation into the mess. The Makabayan bloc members of the House of Representatives listened — Kabataan party-list Rep. Raoul Danniel Manuel is from Iloilo City. On January 26 they filed House Resolution 721 urging the House to conduct an inquiry "into the defects of the Ungka Flyover and the delays on the Aganan Flyover in Iloilo in the interest of transparency and accountability." According to a May 23 report in Panay News, Iloilo congressmen Michael Gorriceta (2nd District) and Lorenz Defensor (3rd District) co-authored HR 721.

The resolution has been pending with the House committee on rules since January 30. Yes, it's been four months and the committee appears to have taken no action regarding the resolution.

The DPWH paid a third-party consultant to conduct a thorough investigation. The findings and recommendations were submitted to the Regional Development Council's infrastructure development committee on May 15. It was disclosed that all 16 piers of the flyover had been sinking since May 2022. The soil on which the piers are grounded is soft and bored holes should have been much deeper. Rectification work to the tune of at least P250 million would be required to make the flyover safe for use.

In February, the DPWH suspended work on the P560-million Aganan Flyover (the other flyover mentioned in HR 721). While no material defects had been detected, the soil type was found to be the same as where the Ungka Flyover is situated, and thus, the design is deemed defective. The contractor? International Builders Corp.

In the wake of the findings on the Ungka flyover, the Pavia municipal council, probably tired of waiting for the House to act, passed another resolution, this time asking the Senate to investigate.

As for the construction of the 10-story Cebu City Medical Center, this is funded by the Cebu City government. At least P1 billion has been spent since the groundbreaking in July 2015, yet until now, only three floors are operational.

Numerous suspensions, extensions, delays and controversies have hounded the project. For instance, CoA in its 2021 annual audit found that Phase 2 (installation of power lines) was suspended from July 1 2019 until Dec. 11, 2020. The P300-million Phase 2 was supposed to have been completed by Sept. 30, 2019, during the term of the late Mayor Edgardo Labella.

The contract for the P900-million Phase 4 — the most expensive phase — was signed in April 2022 but by November, Mayor Michael Rama called for its termination on the grounds that the contractor was behind schedule.

Last month, a team organized by city hall to check the status of the construction reported numerous defects in the structure but that these could be corrected. No one was blamed for these lapses. But what about accountability? The public has the right to know why Cebu City, after eight years, P1 billion and thousands of manpower hours later, still doesn't have a fully operational hospital.

"I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss," Dickens imagined Sydney Carton's final thoughts at the guillotine to have been. For us to rise from the abyss we need to know what went wrong so that we may avoid making the same mistakes again. Let the age of foolishness come to an end.

2023-05-28T22:36:46Z dg43tfdfdgfd