WB-funded Cabanatuan project almost complete

CABANATUAN CITY – The P300-million World Bank-funded Cabanatuan City Comprehensive Drainage Project (CCCDP) is now almost complete.

Mayor Julius Cesar Vergara told a briefing with World Bank officials here that Phases 1 and 2 of the CCCDP have already been completed with Phase 3 to follow soon.

Vergara said that the four drainage outfalls are now in various stages of completion. These are the Gabaldon outfall (94.12 percent), Sanciangco (89.66 percent), Zulueta/Parumog (87.55 percent) and Mabini (90.83 percent).

The project which started last year, will benefit 18 barangays which are traditional flood-prone areas through a comprehensive drainage system that includes a sewer treatment plant.

Vergara hosted WB officials led by Christian Delvoie, newly appointed Director for Infrastructure, East Asia of the World Bank; Ming Zhang, Head of the Infrastructure division of the World Bank Office in Manila and Christopher Ancheta, head of the WB’s Project Management Office-Water District Development Project (PMO-WDDP). They were accompanied here by WB consultants Chris Pablo and Italian Rodolfo Giusto of the C. Lotti Associati.

In a presentation at the La Parilla Hotel here, Vergara told bank officials that the city government has realized savings of P237 million of which P137 million came from the reorganization of the bloated city hall bureaucracy and P110.6 million from tax collection.

The reorganization, which was approved by the Civil Service Commission (CSC), resulted in the layoff of 900 employees who were given separation pay.

He also reported that his administration built 22 kilometers of roads parallel to the highway by administration which is a much cheaper way of implementing public works projects instead of by contracts.

Vergara in the hour-long presentation also reported that the city government was able to accomplish the following :

• provided P18 million worth of logistical support to the local PNP which enabled it to win the best police station award nationwide twice over the last four years; and

• provided P177 million worth of medical assistance to 17,000 poor patients.

Vergara told Delvoie that he is now lobbying Congress to pass into law the city’s 50-year development master plan to ensure that it would be implemented by succeeding administrations. "It’s passage will ensure continuity of what we have started," he said.

The city government is also planning to construct bypass roads between Cabanatuan and the town of Sta. Rosa in partnership with Gov. Tomas Joson III and Sta. Rosa Mayor Marlon Marcelo and a bridge in Talipapa-Sumacab to serve as alternate routes of vehicles coming from the North.

The Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) in a January 15,2003 certification, he said, certified the city government vas a "triple A" borrower and reduced interest on its loans from 14 percent per annum to only nine percent per annum.