P13M budget for Calasiao's defective drainage system – DPWH

By Mortz C. Ortigoza  

   

CALASIAO – The defective drainage system of the Department of Public Works & Highway that causes flooding at the poblacion here has a proposed P13 million budget in the next year’s General Appropriation Act (GAA).

According to 4th District Engineering Office's District Engineer Simplicio D. Gonzales, the DPWH central office in Manila approved the P13 million budget for the concrete canal that stretches from the cockpit arena here to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Chowking, Jollibee, to the Datuin Machine Shop.

Fourth District Engineering Office's District Engineer Simplicio Gonzales in his office at the Department of Public Works & Highway in Sta. Barbara, Pangasinan. 

“Once it is approved by congress I will call a bid for it on November so the contractor will start the construction on January 2020,” Gonzales said.

The drainage problem in this town started in 2017 when the owner of a land where a creek is located at the Judge Jose de Venecia Highway back filled it that impede the flow of the drainage water that runs to the Banaoang River.

“For the meantime, we should be talking with the land owner who dumped soil at the exit canal of the water so we can have a temporary exit for the flood there,” he cited.

Gonzales said another factor that aggravated the problem here was the construction several years ago of the drainage that was not tilting to the exit in the Banaoang River. Part of the P13 million budget, he explained, was its reconstruction.

In the  national 2021 budget he will propose to construct another egress of the water from the same drainage system that will exit at the Parongking River.  

He cited that his office will have P1.2 billion allocations in fiscal year 2020 similar to this year’s budget from the GAA.

READ: 

DPWH exec explains how clogging mess started