Still no gabions in Transcentral Highway?

I don’t know how many columns in the past did we wrote about the problems plaguing the Transcentral Highway, that whenever it rains hard it almost always results in a huge landslide. That’s exactly what happened last Friday along kilometer 39 in Barangay Cansumoroy, Balamban where this vital link between Cebu and Balamban was totally impassable because of landslides. Thankfully the very energetic Rep. Pablo John Garcia will be requesting realignment from the P30 million set aside to repair a 50-meter stretch near the place that already collapsed.

But it is time to call a spade-a-spade! Fixing the collapsed portion of the Transcentral Highway will not prevent it from ever collapsing again. When the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWD) constructed the Transcentral Highway they should have placed Gabion nettings along the heavily sloped areas in order to prevent rocks and mud from cascading down on the road below. Gabions are used in modern engineering, which is mostly made of hexagonal wire mesh, which helps retain its rectangular shape to prevent the shifting of the land.

I’m not an engineer, but I once chaired the Regional Development Council’s (RDC) Infrastructure Development Committee (IDC) because of my M. E. (Morag Engineer). I have traveled extensively and noticed that gabion wire mesh are used not only on railway lines (I saw many of that when I traveled to Japan a couple of months ago) but also to protect riverbanks, strengthen dikes where earth retaining is essential.

When I asked the DPWH officials during the construction of the Transcentral Highway why they didn’t put gabions on the sloped areas, I was merely told that there was no budget for it! This is what we call wrong economics DPWH style! If only they put a budget for gabion wire mesh to support the slopes of the Transcentral Highway, the chances of a landslide is almost zero. But because there was no budget for gabions then, now we have to spend millions more to fix broken roadway and since there is still no gabions in place, you can bet that when the next rains come, the newly-fixed roads are going to collapse once again! 

If you ask me, DPWH has no choice but to prepare a budget for gabion wire mesh to be placed on the critical areas of the Transcentral Highway. Let me point out that in Luzon, DPWH have so cleverly fixed many sloped areas. When we rode our big bikes to Pagudpud Bay, we passed through the Patapat Bridge where the North Cordillera Mountain Range ends into the sea. It is a 1.2 kilometer elevated road, similar to the elevated highway along the SRP as it enters into the Cebu mainland. This prevents rocks from destroying the road as they merely slide under the highway.

Going to Baguio City using the Marcos Highway, DPWH built what tantamount to a concrete tunnel along the road so that any landslides merely passes over the roadway. I guess, DPWH officials got sick and tired of throwing away millions of pesos on roads that collapse when the rainy season comes. If our DPWH engineers haven’t been to these places, I suggest that their head office send them to these two places so they can learn from them.

If there is anything that we Filipinos seriously lack, it is money for infrastructure. However the DPWH lacks more than just money… they lack the initiative and the motivation to find ways to save money by investing in infrastructure that prevents erosion of our major thoroughfares. If only our people in the DPWH had this intuition, then we would have never seen the Transcentral Highway collapse.

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I can understand that many of our government employees lack motivation or initiative. That is simply because many government employees, especially those who are considered contractual or casual have been working for many years in government service, yet they have no security of tenure and work merely at the pleasure of the power-that-be. More often than not, Local Government Officials (LGU) take advantage of this situation for political purposes. This is why when the incumbents are running for re-election; they have this very useful advantage over the challenger who is not in power.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. is pushing for Senate Bill no. 3063 which would amend Sec. 1 and 2 of Republic Act no. 6850 so government employees who have rendered more than seven years of efficient service would be able to get civil eligibility. I fully support this bill because it is a grave injustice for a person who has worked in the government all those years yet his services is not even recognized with a civil eligibility. There’s only one problem with Sen. Pimentel’s bill. He’s a minority.