23 September 2005
EDITORIAL: The shortest distance between two points is a circle?
WHY, in Benjamin’s name, should the government (translated: Department of Public Works and Highways) want to spend more when it can spend less? And why should it prefer to build a longer road when it can construct a shorter one and still achieve its purpose?
To those who are wise to the ways of government transactions, these questions would seem pretty, pretty stupid. They need not be asked at all. Without us spelling out the obvious reason though, we know that somehow, a politician like Mayor Benjamin S. Lim already has the answer.
In the case of the Dawel-Pantal-Lucao circumferential road project, the dream project of House Speaker Jose C. de Venecia, the bone of contention is the additional P80 million or so that will have to be taken from government coffers in order to complete the road project --under an arbitrarily altered road alignment plan. Were the original road alignment to be followed which would exit and link directly to the present de Venecia highway thru the NelArs posh subdivision, a distance of some 650 meters only, the expense for civil works would have been just P28.5 million.
Now that some wise guys at DPWH, for one reason or the other, decided to move earth, do fillings and embankments further down, extending the road to pass at the back of CSI The City Mall then circling the Arco-Bautista road before finally linking up with the De Venecia highway – an additional road length of 1,480 meters (by the city mayor’s office measurement) – the cost is up by P65.12 million.
We won’t go into the “business” angle that may have influenced this infrastructure design maneuver because, for all we know, despite the seeming ill-logic and impractical appearance of the change in plan, DPWH might just have “plausible” reasons for it the way it often does when caught in a bind.
What we’d just like to ask is why, thru all these months of construction of the road, no one but no one had bothered to tell the city, thru BSL, why there was a change in the plans. (And for that matter, was JDV informed at all too?) The way it happened, it looks like someone or some people were putting one over BSL, that’s the inescapable conclusion. For what great motive, that’s for the planners to hide and for the mayor to learn too late – except that he found out about the caper, and came up with a satellite photo evidence besides, rather early in the “game.”
To those who are wise to the ways of government transactions, these questions would seem pretty, pretty stupid. They need not be asked at all. Without us spelling out the obvious reason though, we know that somehow, a politician like Mayor Benjamin S. Lim already has the answer.
In the case of the Dawel-Pantal-Lucao circumferential road project, the dream project of House Speaker Jose C. de Venecia, the bone of contention is the additional P80 million or so that will have to be taken from government coffers in order to complete the road project --under an arbitrarily altered road alignment plan. Were the original road alignment to be followed which would exit and link directly to the present de Venecia highway thru the NelArs posh subdivision, a distance of some 650 meters only, the expense for civil works would have been just P28.5 million.
Now that some wise guys at DPWH, for one reason or the other, decided to move earth, do fillings and embankments further down, extending the road to pass at the back of CSI The City Mall then circling the Arco-Bautista road before finally linking up with the De Venecia highway – an additional road length of 1,480 meters (by the city mayor’s office measurement) – the cost is up by P65.12 million.
We won’t go into the “business” angle that may have influenced this infrastructure design maneuver because, for all we know, despite the seeming ill-logic and impractical appearance of the change in plan, DPWH might just have “plausible” reasons for it the way it often does when caught in a bind.
What we’d just like to ask is why, thru all these months of construction of the road, no one but no one had bothered to tell the city, thru BSL, why there was a change in the plans. (And for that matter, was JDV informed at all too?) The way it happened, it looks like someone or some people were putting one over BSL, that’s the inescapable conclusion. For what great motive, that’s for the planners to hide and for the mayor to learn too late – except that he found out about the caper, and came up with a satellite photo evidence besides, rather early in the “game.”
