Newsbriefs

‘SUPPORT 93-1 RESOLUTION’

CEBU City Mayor Michael Rama yesterday urged the Cebu Provincial Board (PB) to support with a resolution the city and province’s plan to come up with an agreement on the lots covered by Provincial Ordinance 93-1.

“I would like encourage them to come up with a resolution supporting the stand of the governor,” he said.

Rama said only a formal process is needed for the 93-1 land dispute to be considered fully solved.

Cebu Gov. Gwendloyn Garcia earlier said the province will not displace any family occupying a 93-1 lot.

She said the province already agreed that settlers will pay the price set by the Department of Interior and Local Government.

Rama said the price is just an “accessory” and that the real issue, the threat of eviction that settlers faced, was already resolved./Correspondent Fatrick R. Tabada

MORE LIGHTS FOR BARANGAYS

CEBU City Mayor Michael Rama met on Monday with Councilors Roberto Cabarrubias and Edu Rama to discuss a plan to light up inner barangay roads to help deter crime.

Cabarrubias said they would use in the project at least 2,000 sodium lamps that were earlier removed from posts along major thoroughfares.

The monochromatic sodium lamps were replaced with metal halide bulbs delivered to the city in February.

Cabarrubias said the metal halide bulbs are brighter and better for lighting major streets.

He said the city street lighting division is refurbishing the sodium lamps they earlier took from main city streets.

Personnel from the street lighting division have also been tasked to identify barangays where the sodium lamps would be installed./Correspondent Edison A. Delos Angeles

ACCUSED OF HARASSMENT QUITS

Cebu City Hall job-order employee Oliver Ruiz stopped reporting to work as a document processor at the City’s Hospitalization Assistance and Medical Program last week after a 19-year-old City Hall intern filed a harassment complaint against him.

The mayor’s chief of staff Philip Zafra who investigated the incident said he recommended that Mayor Michael Rama not to renew the service of Ruiz. Rama has yet to sign the recommendation.

Last week, the intern and her mother filed a letter complaint addressed to Rama citing Ruiz for downloading her sexy pictures from Facebook. When the intern did not reply to Ruiz’s text messages, he threatened to edit the pictures to make the picture appear nude. The complainants said Ruiz threatened to post the edited pictures and the name of the intern’s school in a blog.

Ruiz denied that he downloaded the pictures but admitted that the threats were made in jest./Correspondent FatricK R. Tabada

BRT IN SRP

COLIN Brader of the Asian Development Bank-Cities Development Initiative Asia (ADB-CDIA) presented to the Cebu City Council yesterday a plan to extend the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route to the South Road Properties “to support its economic growth.”

Brader said that the SRP-BRT can also lead to the North Bus Terminal in the North Reclamation Area and can be extended to Mandaue City and the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA). He said they are conducting a feasibility study on the project.

MCIA general manager Paul Villarete, formerly Cebu City’s planning office head, said the ADB-CDIA is funding the pre-feasibility study for the BRT proposed at the SRP.

He said the city government may tap other funding institutions like the World Bank (WB) to fund the project implementation.

Villarete said a mass transport system like the BRT should also include the MCIA. The airport would soon have a new terminal building, but this was not enough for passenger convenience. “What good will that be (new airport building) to the passenger if when they arrive there is no ride to Mandaue or Cebu City?”

Villarete said airport management may later undertake a study to come up with a transport system.

Villarete said that a BRT operation in Cebu City is part of the city government’s vision for an environmentally friendly and sustainable transport system.

Structures would already start to rise at the SRP in 2012, thus the need to provide access to the SRP../Chief Of Reporters Doris C. Bongcac