SANTIAGO CITY, Isabela—The Department of Public Works and Highways of Isabela’s 4th Engineering District Office (DPWH-4EDC) has completed and accomplished 87 percent of all the targeted infrastructure projects for fiscal year 2016.
The projects included road widening and those of the regular bottleneck in Diadi-Cordon areas, local infrastructure initiated by congressional allotment of P100 million to 15 major projects in the seven municipalities and Santiago City.
Moreno said the projects also include flood control, bridges, school buildings, farm to market road concreting and water impounding projects.
However, the DPWH-4EDC has accused the Santiago Water District (Sanwad) of delaying its P18-million bridge widening project on the national road here.
Engineer Bernard Moreno said Sanwad’s main pipe hinders the completion of the widening of Magabito Bridge in Mabini, now also causing heavy traffic along the Maharlika Road.
“We sent Sanwad a letter on October 18, 2015 asking them to remove one of their main pipes which traverses the length of Magabito Bridge due to ongoing construction and renovations work by Mardeb Construction but our plea fell on deaf ears,” Moreno said.
He said the bridge is supposed to be opened on July 30 but Sanwad’s pipe is still there which has been causing the construction firm a negative slippage and delay in reaching its target of completion.
“This Magabito Bridge is one of our big problems. Sanwad won’t hasten in relocating their pipe which poses risk to motorists. We would start concreting on the bridge runaway soon but Sanwad would have to clean up its own mess. They should observe timeliness so that we could finish our project on the deadline, but we are already delayed as it is,” Moreno said.
According to Mardeb Construction, as early as Oct. 12, 2015, they have already called the attention of 4EDC for Sanwad to dig out one of their main size eight pipes which lay atop the bridge runaway where nearly six meters of the pipe’s length straddle the bridge runaway and to relocate it.
“We have even tried helping Sanwad by welding dowels on the bridge walls in order to accommodate the pipe but Sanwad was such a slowpoke in removing the pipe which causes delay in concreting the bridge runaway,” Mardeb construction stated.
Engineer Leopoldo Narciso, Sanwad engineering division chief, refused to comment.
