Guardo: Simplify project requirements

CEBU, Philippines — To implement government-funded projects in Cebu City faster, City Council Committee on Infrastructure chairman Jerry Guardo urged the city government to streamline the requirements set by the City Planning and Development Office (CPDO).

During the regular Monday flag-raising ceremony at the Plaza Sugbo, Guardo said that the requirements for securing a locational clearance must be simplified. This after learning that there were city projects under the Local Development Fund (LDF) left unimplemented due to failure to comply with the requirements.

Guardo said he recommended the said streamlining of requirements to acting Cebu City Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia to provide ease for the Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) as well as the city barangays, saying that that the requirements asked for by the CPDO are difficult to comply with.

“Ang nahitabo man gud actually, kay tungod ang requirements sa City Planning karon lisod kaayo i-comply… It’s really difficult for the barangay and the engineers to comply, so we recommend the executive (office) to streamline to make sure, kay og mas sayon man gud ang requirements, ma-simplified siya,” Guardo said, adding that once the requirements are simplified, this will hasten the implementation of the projects.

He said he observed from the past years that the projects under the LDF turned out to be realigned due to the identical requirements of locational clearance for both government and private developers. He said the requirements for government-funded projects like road concreting, road asphalting, drainage systems, construction of gabion dams, and horizontal projects must be distinct from the application checklist for private developers.

“So, i-streamline ang requirements for government projects since the government are the one funding (and) pushing the realization of the projects… In order for us to expedite the construction of these needed infrastructure projects sa mga barangay,” Guardo said.

For 2024, Guardo said that Cebu City has allocated ?600 million for the LDF, approved in the 2024 annual budget.

When asked for the number of projects that are implemented and unimplemented, Guardo could not provide the exact data from the CPDO but said there were more projects that failed to be implemented than were successfully implemented.

Meanwhile, Guardo said that they have endorsed an issuance of a new executive order mandating city projects included in the annual LDF to be implemented within the same year.

Guardo said that such recommendation was from the DEPW, CPDO, and City Legal Office submitted before the Office of the City Mayor.

The said EO is pending for approval and has yet to be signed by Garcia tentatively within this week or the next. — Nicholas Jon Malaga, CNU intern (FREEMAN)