Eco Center breaks ground in Carcar City

CEBU, Philippines - As part of the highlights of its 7th Charter Day celebration, Carcar City officials and guests led the ceremonial capsule-laying for the city’s 30-hectare Eco City Center in Barangay Poblacion III.

Mayor Nice Apura said the new facility, once it opens to the public, is expected to boost the economic activities of the city.

First to be constructed in this huge property is the three-storey City Hall, which will cost around P300 million.

“The City Hall is just one of the components. We will also have the national agencies here, the terminal, the auction house and others,” said Apura, who led the groundbreaking ceremony.

 The city has converted, phase by phase, the vast rice fields along the road of Poblacion III, but Apura said there is nothing to worry as they converted a 70-hectare lot in Barangay Tuyom into a rice field in exchange for the one they converted into non-agricultural use.

“We converted a new ricefield in Tuyom, mga 70 hectares na. Dili mi utangan sa kinaiyahan kay amo nama’ng giilisan,” he said. Carcar is one of the top producers of rice in the province.

 Prior to the groundbreaking of the Eco City Center, the city inaugurated its Digital Tourism program, which aims to improve the city’s tourism department by using the latest technology.

 Cebu first district Representative Gerald Anthony “Samsam” Gullas, who was yesterday’s guest, commended the city officials for making the city achieved a “tremendous development.”

 “This administration has moved this city forward. The development has been tremendous,” he said. Apura and his Vice Mayor Patrick Barcenas are both on their second term.

 Gullas, meanwhile, said he hopes that in the city’s 8th Charter Day anniversary, he would be able to gift them with a law making the entire city a cultural heritage zone.

Samsam’s grandfather, former first district Representative Eduardo Gullas, earlier pushed for it but the proposal did not get through the House until his term ended in 2013.  (FREEMAN)