From its P7.9B original budget
By: JOEY A. GABIETA
GOVERNMENT CENTER, PALO, Leyte- The cost of work of the Leyte tide embankment project is expected to balloon from its original cost of P7.9 billion.
This was disclosed by Engr. Serafin Lago, Jr., road heightening on tide embankment project manager, who said that the increase of the project cost is intended to pay lot owners who refuses to provide temporary access road leading to the construction sites.
According to Lago, the refusal of these owners to give them access road may pose a problem for the completion of the project by 2020.
“Because of the demand of the lot owners in providing us access road, we will now include it in our budget which will result to the increase of the project cost,” Lago said.
He, however, could not say how much the projected increase would be.
The tide embankment project involves more than 50 barangays from the towns of Palo and Tanauan and Tacloban City.
And since the project started January of last year, they have about 23 to 25 percent accomplishment, Lago said.
Lago also said that the project, considered as among the infrastructure projects under the Build Build Build program of the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, is projected to be completed by 2020.
But with the demand of several lot owners, the completion may be pushed back.
The project aims to protect the covered areas from possible occurrence of storm surge as what happened when super typhoon ‘ Yolanda’ pummeled Leyte and the rest of the region on November 8,2013.
The project cost of the P7.9 billion is being sourced from the General Appropriations Act.
Lago also said that the tide embankment project is expected to provide 3,000 employment among the locals.
“We actually obliged the contractors to hire 60 percent of their workforce from the villages. And we estimate of about 3,000 job generation until the project is finished,” he said.
Lago, however, admitted that once the project is finished, these workers would lose their work.
“They are co-terminus with the project,” he said.
