In Bohol: DILG gives P2.3B for rehab of quake-hit gov’t buildings

TAGBILARAN CITY, Philippines — Interior Secretary Mar Roxas handed over a check of P2,389,499,190 to Bohol Governor Edgar  Chatto during the weekly Capitol press conference, attended by provincial officials at the Governor’s Mansion in this city yesterday.

Roxas, touted as the standard bearer of the Liberal Party in the 2016 presidential elections, made the turnover of the fund assistance following President Noynoy Aquino’s order to release the money “to boost rehabilitation efforts in areas devastated by the magnitude-7.2 earthquake in October 2013.”

The amount, the biggest so far given by the P-Noy’s administration since the quake struck the province last year, was intended for rehabilitation works of damaged city and municipal halls, barangay centers and other government facilities, Roxas told The Freeman.

Rehabilitation works on public school buildings, heritage churches, road and bridges, equally devastated by the tremor, were however not included in the allocation, he said.

Earlier, the National Housing Authority, through Vice President Jejomar Binay, effected the release of millions of funds to help finance the reconstruction of fallen private houses in various quake-damaged towns.

In Maribojoc alone, the town received from Binay P33 million from NHA through Mayor Leoncio Evasco. The money was used to procure the materials needed to rebuild houses of the quake victims at P10,000 each.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development, through Secretary Dinky Soliman, also released an amount of more than P350 million to the province with the Habitat for Humanity Foundation, Inc. headed by Charlie Ayco, the executive director, as the implementer to build an initial 8,000 plus houses of poor ‘quake victims.’

Roxas also gave Bohol P636 million for the province’s various anti-poverty projects, under the grassroots participatory budgeting process (GPBP).

This GPBP fund will have “high impact” on the beneficiaries, such as those Alicia town that got P12 million for the rehabilitation and expansion of water supply system project.

Others were the P6 million for rehabilitation of farm-to-market roads of upland barangays in Anda town; P4.5 million for improvement of farm-to-market roads in Antequera town; P4.7 million for cacao production in Batuan town; P5.9 million for farm-to-market road in Buenavista town; P6.5 million for rehab of Gabayan communal irrigation system in Candijay town; and P8.1 million for farm-to-market road in Carmen town. Thirty-four more towns have qualified for the GPBP funding.

Further, a total of  26  local government units in Bohol stand to benefit from Roxas’s checks representing “incentive funds” for good governance at P1 million each.

Roxas and Budget Secretary Butch Abad and DILG bigwigs and provincial officials joined in the inauguration of the 4-km Bingag-Tinago road stretch in nearby Dauis town, headed by Mayor Miriam Sumaylo. The road is being rehabilitated and funded by the Australian government under the provincial road management facility of  the Aus-Aid of Australia.

Both Roxas and Abad also graced the Provincial Congress on Disaster Preparedness and Climate Mitigation, held at the Bohol Cultural Center in the city and attended by barangay chairmen of 1,109 barangays in Bohol. (FREEMAN)