On Oct. 30, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno visited the Binondo-Intramuros (BI) Bridge Project to inspect its progress in the company of the Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian.
During the visit, Ambassador Huang told Mayor Moreno that the project had come to a halt since the implementation of the ECQ in Manila in mid-March. During that period, the project contractor CRDC provided both the Chinese and Filipino staff with sufficient livelihood and epidemic prevention supplies. Since the lift of the ECQ in May, the Chinese contractor has adopted a scientific approach to respond to the new normal of the COVID-19 pandemic and maintained a record of zero confirmed case on site. The project is 44 percent accomplished by the end of October 2020.
Ambassador Huang emphasized that the project has resumed full capacity, currently with 128 Filipino and 37 Chinese employees working on site. The local employees account for 77.6 percent of the total staff with still more local workers to be hired as the implementation dives deep, while Chinese employees are mainly managerial and technical personnel.
Chinese enterprises in the Philippines have always attached great importance to localized development, always intending to hire local people as many as possible, being keen to practice technology transfer to the local and actively perform social responsibilities to better integrate into local society. Nevertheless, some major Chinese enterprises still created about 38,000 jobs for the local society, while the local employee hiring rate accounts for more than 92 percent. With the further deepening of China-Philippine economic and trade cooperation, more and more job opportunities would be created accordingly by the Chinese side.
Besides, Ambassador Huang mentioned that the BI Bridge project contractor employed many advanced construction methods such as the pushing method and the bottom construction method of the boxed cofferdam and building a solid piling foundation with a depth of 60 meters. These advanced technologies have been transferred to the Philippines, which could be adopted and widely used by other projects in the future. What’s more, during the pandemic Chinese companies have donated nearly 10 million pieces of anti-epidemic medical supplies to the Philippine society according to incomplete statistics.
BI Bridge Project, spanning over the Pasig River and connecting Binondo and Intramuros, is the first China-aid infrastructure project in Metro Manila constructed under the Duterte administration, and one of the Twelve Bridges Project on Pasig-Marikina River and Manggahan Floodway of DPWH with the aim of defusing traffic congestion along the Pasig-Marikina River. The project was commenced in July 2018 and is expected to be accomplished within the Duterte administration. Upon completion, it will carry extra traffic of around 30,000 vehicles/day and ease the traffic congestion between the Binondo and Intramuros districts, and the attractive design of the arch bridge will become a new iconic landscape there. – Submitted by the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China