P500T for road projects in each Cebu City barangay

CEBU City’s barangay captains were encouraged yesterday to submit their program of works and estimates (POWE) needed for their road concreting projects.

Councilor Alvin Arcilla, at  yesterday’s Association of Barangay Council (ABC)  meeting, said the city government has to identify another P300 million to P400 million to make sure that all the city’s 80 barangay  rough roads would be concreted.

“There’s no money yet for this. This is for funding pa,” Arcilla said.

Under the program, the city government approves the POWE from the barangays and releases funds  for  implementation.

Barangays can accept  bids from accredited City Hall contractors for the project implementation.

Arcilla said that a  P1-million appropriate is set aside for each of the top 10 barangays in the  north and south district with the biggest population  for use in  road-concreting projects.

Smaller barangays are given P500,000 each.

“If you still need more, you can channel your request for funding to the different councilors,” he said.

Each of the city’s 18 councilors have a  P4-million  Local Development Fund (LDF) each year to support specific projects.

To  prevent  misappropriation of funds, Arcilla said that city engineers will  inspect progress of the road-concreting projects.

Winning contractors are required to  use only premixed cement.

Sampling will be done for every  delivery of cement supplies to prevent having  substandard projects.

Arcilla was  tasked to receive POWEs from northern barangays while councilor Roberto Cabarrubias accepts the POWE of south district barangays. /Chief of Reporters Doris  C. Bongcac