DID Pavia, Iloilo Mayor Arcadio Gorriceta deliberately lie when he repeatedly accused the Syjuco couple of trying to “magic” asphalt into dakal-dakal or gravel and sand? Let’s see.
A faxed copy of a document – the September 9, 2008 letter of 2nd District Congresswoman Judy Syjuco to DPWH Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane, Jr. – mirrors the initiative of the congresswoman, not of the mayor, in amending the program of work from one of dakal-dakal component to one of cement. Excerpts of the letter follow:
“This refers to the repair/rehabilitation of Tigum Pagsangaan Road, scheduled for the rehabilitation cost of Php 10.5M.
“We hereby support the upgrading thereof from the original plan of ‘repair/rehabilitation’ to ‘concreting of road.’
“May we please ask the District Engineer of the Iloilo 4th District Engineering Office to make a new program of work to be submitted to your Regional Director and then to your Honor as soon as possible for a corresponding increase of budget that is required for the upgraded work to be done.
“On the other hand, please be informed that we object vehemently to the request of the Mayor of Pavia to administer the work. The town should limit its affairs to local governance and should not be in construction business.
“The DPWH is the sole agency for public projects which it may itself administer or bid out to qualified contractors.”
Let us recall that Mayor Gorriceta started hitting the Syjucos – the congresswoman and her husband, TESDA Secretary Augusto Syjuco – on AM radio stations on September 10, one day after the congresswoman had written the above letter. Since it was Madam Syjuco herself who had asked for upgrading of the program of work from “repair/rehabilitation” using dakal-dakal to “concreting” or cementing, how could the mayor accuse the couple of settling for mere dakal-dakal out of a bursting P28-million budget?
From the aforesaid letter, it is obvious that there was no such P28-m defrayed, since the congresswoman was actually asking for additional fund; and that the P10.5-m already released was not a first tranche of the alleged three tranches but the entire budget for the original program of work.
If all the mayor wants is to see the aforesaid road concretized, rather than go into construction business himself, then he now has reason to be jolly. In response to the congresswoman’s request, the DPWH has upped the road budget from P10.5-m to P37.5-m, which would concretize the 2.5-kilometer Pavia portion of the Tigum-Pagsangaan-Cabugao Norte provincial road, with a width of 9.1 meters — 6.1-meter concrete plus a 1.5-meter gravel shoulder on each side. That’s P9-5-m more than the P28-m asphalt road that Gorriceta would have settled for.
It is a no-no for a municipal government to undertake the job because it is not accredited by the Bureau of Research and Standards, except in rare cases where the DPWH itself flashes the green light whenever such a municipality has a group of qualified engineering personnel and needed equipment.
By keeping their mouths shut while clawing for an ideal program of work for Gorriceta’s municipality, the Syjucos have done an action that speaks more than Gorriceta’s thousand words.
This corner thinks that Ka Cadio, until recently a kapuso of the Syjucos, should have coordinated with Boboy and Inday Judy instead of raising hell. Since unfolding events have betrayed his accusation as a mere figment of imagination, he has gained nothing but lost a patron.
No matter how Cadio denies it, Pavianhons have not forgotten that it was Boboy Syjuco who bankrolled his candidacy for the mayorship in 2004, and again in 2007 after Boboy had restrained other hopefuls from running against him.
Incidentally, for the first time since the dakal-dakal issue cropped up, the Syjucos will grace a public function today – the graduation exercise of TESDA’s 173 construction trainees who expect to work in Saudi Arabia and Guam.
No, there’s no anti-Cadio press conference in the agenda, contrary to radio reports, for the sake of KKK – kalipayan, kauswagan, kaayuhan.
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