City to form team for BRT project

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu City government will form a team for the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit counterpart project, which will undertake the social impact management and detailed engineering design.

In its recent regular session, the City Council approved the creation of the project team, as proposed by Cebu-BRT czar Rafael Yap and sponsored by Councilor Nestor Archival.

In his resolution, Archival, chairman of council committee on transportation and utilities, said the BRT project aims to respond to the need for an “efficient, dependable and environmentally sustainable urban public transportation” in the city.

Under the approved project, the Department of Transportation and Communications requires support from the local government in the form of technical personnel that would assist in the detailed engineering design.

With the pending implementation of the project, Yap said that working in parallel with the detailed engineering design is the conduct of social impact management in consonance with the approved Social Management plan for affected stakeholders.

“The Cebu City government has committed to spearhead the social impact management of affected stakeholders of the BRT project as per Memorandum of Agreement with the DOTC and DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways),” Yap said.

With this, Yap said that the city government should hire five civil engineers and another five psychology or social work graduates to undertake the project.

At least P5.5 million would be needed to fund the wages of the hired personnel for the whole year. They will be considered job order personnel under the project until December 30, 2015.

The personnel’s functions and responsibilities include providing technical and administrative support to DOTC consultants, including but not limited to design data collection and reporting activities; implement approved plans for the BRT project; serve as liaison of the city government to DOTC, World Bank and their consultants; and attend to other activities related directly or indirectly to the project. —NSA (FREEMAN)