Bridge project caught in BCDA-Angeles City row

ANGELES CITY — For lack of an alternative route, thousands of motorists to and from the Clark special economic zone here risk their safety crossing a shaky, one-way temporary bridge.

This, after work on the parallel P97-million Friendship Bridge was suddenly frozen due to a funding controversy between the city government and the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA).

The BCDA refused to release some P30.5 million to complete the bridge unless the city government, headed by Mayor Carmelo Lazatin, funded the eastern and western approaches now 96.85 percent complete.

Because of this, motorists, mostly investors, employees and Clark visitors, risk their safety crossing the temporary bridge less than a kilometer from the ecozone’s gate along the Friendship Highway.

The bridge, which motorists observed to be shaking lately, was built on the foundation of the old bridge which collapsed amid heavy flows along the Abacan River in November 2000.

In a letter to Angeles City Mayor Carmelo Lazatin, BCDA president and chief executive officer Rufo Colayco said that although the bridge is 96.85 percent complete, it remains impassable due to incomplete approaches on both sides.

Colayco said the BCDA cannot release more funds unless the bridge’s approaches are completed, as stipulated in its agreement with the city government last year.

"The BCDA board granted approval for the release of the P60-million counterpart funding for the project on condition that upon disbursement of the full amount, the Friendship Bridge would be passable to traffic," he said.

He said a BCDA performance evaluation team found the approaches still unfinished and impassable.

City information officer Irish Calaguas, however, told The STAR that the city government has already spent some P29 million for the project.

Earlier, the Clark Development Corp. (CDC) said it donated P7 million to the city government for the project.

With the bridge 96.85 percent complete, Lazatin wrote the BCDA requesting it to release more funds to pay the contractors, AL-B Construction and Haidee Construction and Development Corp. (HCDC), P30,315,574.81 so they could finish the bridge.

In the agreement, the BCDA pledged to provide P60 million for the P97-million project.

But Colayco replied: "We regret that the release of the remaining balance of the BCDA funding will be held in abeyance until such a time that Angeles City can source additional funds to complete both approaches."

The HCDC is the same company which built the multimillion-peso Pandan Bridge here which partially collapsed a few months after it was completed in 2001.

It reconstructed the bridge which, however, was reportedly closed to heavy vehicles recently due to structural weaknesses.