Jonas asks engineers: “Help us with flooding”

CEBU, Philippines - The private sector should get involved in addressing the problem of flooding in Mandaue City as local officials said they cannot solve the problem on their own.

Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes made the statement when officials and members of the Philippine Society of Mechanical Engineers (PSME)- Mandaue Chapter headed by its new-elected president Engr. Pedro Ronulf Diongzon paid him a courtesy call.

During the meeting, Cortes said that private sector especially the PSME members, mostly engineers based in the city, should do their share in addressing the problem.

The city mayor said PSME members in Mandaue City should assist the city government in looking solution to the problem.

The mayor said they should lobby to the Department of  Public Works and Highways.

The city government of Mandaue represented by Cortes signed a memorandum of agreement with the PSME-Mandaue Chapter for the installation of a technology that would process human wastes into energy in the 6.5-hectare relocation site in Barangay Paknaan.

The Paknaan relocation site is now the new home to 1,200 beneficiaries who used to live in riverbanks.

The PSME-Mandaue will still conduct a feasibility study before the project is endorsed to the City Engineer's Office and the city council.

The MOA stipulates that the design will be undertaken by PSME with no cost to the city government and once the project will be turned over, its maintenance and repair will be shouldered by the homeowners association with the assistance of the LGU.

The project is a biogas digestor, the technology that processes human waste and other biodegradable wastes to produce methane gas, which can then be used for lighting, cooking fuel, gas heater, and water heaters.

PSME has assured the project is safe and was already tested in General Santos City.

Diongzon handed a plaque of appreciation to Cortes for his full support of the success of PSME week celebration last year. — (FREEMAN)