ma-a flyover

THE DAVAO City Council approved last Thursday Supplemental Budget No. 2 amounting to a whopping over P881 million.

The bulk of the additional budget will go to the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) which is set to procure 20 10-wheel compactor garbage trucks, three bulldozers, two hydraulic excavators and one 3-wheel cargo motorcycle. All these pieces of equipment are intended to further improve the city’s sanitary and environmental services.

Well, some people, the lucky “contactor” for the supplier of the equipment, will be extremely happy with this development.

The likelihood is that garbage collection and disposal will be improved with the use of the mentioned equipment. But what about the facility that serves as the disposal area for the thousands of tons of garbage collected from the various parts of the city?

Is the present disposal site in New Carmen still capable of accommodating the city’s refuse? As far as we can remember, it’s been years since the city was scouting for a new garbage dump site. It has even entertained the idea of putting up a huge incinerator plant somewhere in Biao Escuela for two reasons. One is to burn garbage that is easily combustible. The other is to generate power under the so-called “waste-to-energy” scheme.

Until now, though, all the talks about scouting for a new dump site and putting up an incinerator plant appear to have died down.

Now the city is adding capacity to collect and dispose of its garbage. Will the bigger volume of collected waste not overwhelm the present dump site? Will the overdumping in the New Carmen site further damage the already deteriorating environment of the city?

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Some government officials, more specifically the chair of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA), are talking of the completion of the Maa Flyover project within this month.

Whether or not the completion will happen, there are certain sectors in Davao City that are finding another possible project realization, subject to credit grab by the current national administration. They fear that the flyover completion will result in the same fate as the new Bucana Bridge.

These sectors of the city’s population, mostly the local government officials identified with the former President, are saying that the bridge project is all Dutertes’ efforts – from conceptualization, planning, looking for possible sources of funds, to negotiating the acquisition of rights of ways, are all initiatives of the city’s ruling family.

Now that the bridge is ready for opening to the public, here comes the President of the country who flatly claimed that the Bucana Bridge is one of his government’s legacy projects.

It is, of course, only natural that most Davaoeños will react adversely to what the President said. All they know – us included – is that the Bucana Bridge is a major component of the Davao City Coastal Road, the planning of which was painstakingly done by the local government under the Dutertes.

Meanwhile, the Maa flyover was not as much hyped as a product of local government initiatives. Its construction is more of a coordinated effort of several government agencies through the Regional Development Council. So many people were surprised when, suddenly, they woke up years back with the foundation of the project already laid out.

The city’s lack of inputs in the Maa flyover project implementation was highlighted when early this year the City Council initiated an investigation into what was causing the delay of the project completion.

The probe also brought to the public’s knowledge the lack of transparency of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) on the circumstances surrounding the project delay.

So, it is our take that there might not be sufficient reason for those sectors in Davao City to claim that the completion of the Maa Flyover soon, if we have to believe the MinDa chair, will be another opportunity for a credit grab by the Malacanang tenant.

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What is this report featured on television by GMA’s Jessica Soho about the long-overdue completion of an underpass project in General Santos City costing close to a billion pesos?

According to the report, the contractor of the underpass project is the same contractor as the Magtuod-New Carmen-New Valencia road expansion and concreting project in Davao City. The contractor happened to be a former ranking official of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc.

The Magtuod-New Carmen-New Valencia project was started a year before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Until now, it has not yet finished. And the cost? Close to half a billion pesos.