The Cebu city government should not be bothering President Aquino with its desire to rebuild the burnt Unit II of the Carbon Market complex, said Rep. Tomas Osmeña.
The city has a P170-million outlay in the budget for this need, said the Cebu City south district congressman.
“We already have P170 million and yet they do not want to start with the construction. Why don’t they use the money to start the foundation?” Osmeña said.
Mayor Michael Rama, who consider the Carbon Market restoration a priority, said in an earlier interview that he wanted to raise at least P300 million for the whole reconstruction.
He earlier asked President Aquino for help he was advised to avail of a loan instead.
Rama made another appeal to the president through Budget Secretary Butch Abad when he visited Manila last week.
The mayor said yesterday he would write Abad to follow up his pledge to bring up the Carbon Market unit II reconstruction project to Aquino’s attention.
Rama could have done this himself if he had joined the welcome party for the President’s visit to Cebu yesterday.
He received a call from the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) early yesterday morning asking him to be there in the president’s welcome party.
Before noon, another call advised him that the welcome party was scrapped since Aquino was only making a brief visit in Cebu.
“I was told that the president was in a hurry and may not have time to meet us. If the opportunity allowed, we would have also been interacting with him,” said Rama told a press conference.
He said there would be another time for him to discuss his concerns on the Carbon Market reconstruction project with Aquino.
Osmena, in a separate interview, said that if the reconstruction project were indeed a priority of the Rama administration, the mayor should have tried to save money and done away with the distribution of huge Christmas and Charter Day bonuses.