Fund lack threatens Aquino road repair target

BAGUIO CITY—Funds being allocated to improve mountain roads in the Cordillera may not be enough to meet targets set by the government for 2016, public works officials said.

Edilberto Carabbacan, Cordillera director of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), and Virgilio Bautista, cochair of the Regional Development Council (RDC), gave Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga Jr. their computations, detailing how the average allocation for road repair and modernization would complete only 100 km of mountain road a year instead of the mandated 175 km.

Paderanga led the Baguio leg of a consultative caravan for the 2011-2016 Philippine Development Plan on Tuesday.

The government has been implementing the Cordillera Road Improvement Project (CRIP)—covering the region’s total national road length of 1,931.205 km—since the region was created in 1987.

In last year’s Regional Project Monitoring and Evaluation System report, DPWH records showed that 46.56 percent (899.277 km of CRIP) had been paved.

Bautista said developing mountain roads is expensive than paving ordinary provincial roads and needs a different set of rules governing mountain highways.

He said President Aquino had ordered the DPWH to pave all national roads by 2014 and all secondary roads before his term ends in 2016, but the pace of work given the current stream of funds will take the region 11 to 12 years to complete the work program.

Carabbacan said the 2013 budget grants the region P3.3 billion, but only P1.5 billion of that amount would be used for road upgrading and concreting, and the DPWH will require P3.5 billion more to fulfill next year’s targets.

Paderanga, however, asked the region’s officials to first achieve something using the resources granted to them.

The Cordillera Regional Development Plan for 2011-2016 describes the region’s road system as still the worst in the country.

It says: “[The Cordillera’s] paved roads record is still below the country’s average of 75 percent, Region 1’s (Ilocos) 94 percent and Region 2’s (Cagayan Valley) 72 percent.”

“Across provinces/city, Baguio registered the highest percentage in paved national roads at 100 percent, followed by Benguet at 65.81 percent, while the northern provinces of Apayao and Kalinga obtained a low 16.30 and 26.50 percent, respectively,” it said.

But it also said CRIP has made progress.

“Notable accomplishments in the implementation of CRIP include the newly rehabilitated Benguet-Nueva Vizcaya Road (Baguio-Kayapa section), a 66-km stretch that forms part of the region’s southern east-west lateral connecting Regions 1 and 2 via Baguio. This section brought closer to Baguio the remote but tourist-drawing towns of Bokod and Kabayan in Benguet, as well as the world-famous rice terraces in Ifugao,” it said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon