PIA Press Release
Sunday, January 01, 2012

Council pushes early bidding of public works projects

BAGUIO CITY, Jan. 1 -- The city council wants national agencies to bid out public works projects early to allow the timely implementation of these projects and avoid creating problems in localities.

The body approved Vice Mayor Daniel Farinas’ proposed resolution urging the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Department of Budget and Management to allow early bidding of public works projects included in the list of projects already funded under the approved national budget to ensure the projects’ early implementation.

Farinas said the late bidding of the projects results to ill–timed implementation of these projects in cities and provinces which leads to more problems and inconveniences.

“The system of implementing said projects during the opening of classes and during the onset of the rainy days is seemingly not an effective scheme as such has brought so much inconveniences to the throng of students who go out to the streets for the start of classes, added to the number of working people and motorists who trek the streets for business or work purposes, hence, this scenario is causing uncalculated losses in the earnings of the affected sector,” Farinas noted.

He said the “national government should look for appropriate solutions to improve the system so as not to create more complicating problems affecting the citizenry on matters of project implementation and the implementing agency of such projects should not make as an excuse the untimely release of funds…”

He said the bidding schedule should be adjusted to make sure that the projects can be implemented during the dry season which is advantageous to the government and the public “considering that work will not be done in haste, thus ensuring the right specifications and good quality of public works and with no interruptions due to typhoons and other similar factors (when these are implemented during the wet season).”

“If bidding is done earlier and the implementation of public works projects is undertaken during the dry season, this would result to a better quality of work, less time to complete such projects and eventually would mean more savings to the government,” Farinas added. (PIA CAR/AR-Baguio City PIO)