COA urged to probe Halsema Highway rehabilitation

March 31, 2019 Provincial

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet — The Commission on Audit (COA) is being urged to probe the multi-million peso rehabilitation and re-blocking project along the Halsema Highway (Baguio- Bontoc Road) by the regional office of the public works department.

In the interest of justice, fair play, transparency and good governance, the anti-crime and anti-corruption group Citizens Crime Watch (CCW-CAR) in a 3-page urgent petition, alleged that there is a serious discrepancy in the implementation of the P210 million Halsema highway road rehabilitation and re-blocking project awarded to private contractor Jomarcan Construction.

Accordingly, there are 14 sections to be rehabilitated but in a separate memorandum of project engineer Ismael dela Cruz, there are only 11 sections that are supposed to be re-blocked.

CCW Cordillera chapter secretary general Salvador Liked said there are supposed to be 15 sections that should be re-blocked, based on the latest reports from the DPWH, thus, the need for the contractor to work double time to improve the status of the project.

DPWH-CAR officials earlier ordered the contractor to “remove and replace” some of the pavements that incurred massive scaling, cracks and holes due to poor workmanship.

Liked said almost all of the sections of the road re-blocking project have encountered glaring defects, but what was removed and replaced were only 10 meters length of the defective road work.

“We are the ones regularly using the Halsema and we are not blind to be simply fooled by the contractor ’s petty reasoning as to the cause of the numerous cracks, scaling and holes,” Liked said.

DPWH officials and technical personnel were challenged to see for themselves the ongoing work at the road system to ascertain the cause of the blatant defects that accordingly had been causing delay among motorists from northern Benguet and Mountain Province, especially vegetable farmers and traders.

Artemio A. Dumlao/ABN