More
secondary students will hold classes in brand new school buildings starting June
this year, some passing through newly concreted or recently soil stabilized provincial
roads after Gov. Erico Aumentado inaugurated some P26 million worth of infrastructure
projects in a spree Friday and Saturday.
Aumentado
led inaugural rites of school buildings at the Pablo O. Lim Memorial High School
(POLMHS) in Barangay Marawis in Valencia town, Lonoy Heroes High School in Barangay
Lonoy in Jagna town and the Camayaan High School in Barangay Camayaan in Loboc
town.
He
also inaugurated the newly-concreted Poblacion-Cabungaan-Lonoy provincial road
in Jagna; another in Batuan town; asphalt overlay of the road leading to the Chocolate
Hills in Carmen town and soil stabilization of a road in Loboc as well as the
bailey bridge that replaced the foot bridge in Barangay Tigbao, also in Loboc
town.
A
joint project of the provincial government of Bohol and the Department of Education
(DepEd) under Secretary Jesli Lapus, the school buildings cost only P780,000 each
- way below the costing of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH)
or even DepEd's Principal-LED projects.
Aumentado
said the DPWH costing is high because it charges supervision fees at the levels
of the district engineer and the regional and central offices at 3.5 percent each.
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governor and Lapus had signed a memorandum of agreement where the provincial government
implements the project, undertaken by local contractors or where there are no
takers, by the Engineer Support Battalion (ESBn) under its commander Lt. Col.
Ramon Evan Ruiz.
The
school buildings have two classrooms, each at the standard floor area of 56 squares
meters at eight meters by seven meters, fully painted inside and out, with electrical
wiring, toilet with plumbing, and blackboards as designed by the provincial government.
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of these items however are missing in the DPWH- or Principal LED-built classrooms.
In some cases, depending on their locations, the classrooms are smaller than the
standard size, the governor observed.
Because
the ESBn workers are already paid as soldiers, Ruiz makes it a point to donate
armchairs from the amount intended for labor like at the POLMHS. The others have
to wait for their armchair allocation from the local DepEd Division Office.
The
buildings are part of the 34 units under Batch 2 that the province and DepEd are
constructing for this school year - twice the number in Batch 1. Of the structures,
14 are being built by ESBn and the rest by contractors.
The
province has a similar project with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The 17-unit
Batch 1 has been completed while the 34-unit Batch 2 is still for implementation.
In both cases, the provincial government prepared the design and specifications.
The Batch 1 units cost P600,000 only. The Batch 2 cost is up by 30 percent to
allow for price escalation in order to give the contractors a modest profit.
On
the other hand, concreting an 808-meter stretch of the road to Lonoy with a carriageway
of five meters as is standard for provincial roads cost Bohol only P6.34 million.
The province's formula like for the road in Batuan is P7 million per kilometer
only.
Meanwhile,
the province spent P3.08 million for the soil stabilization of the road in Loboc,
and P2.5 million for the asphalt overlay of the road in Carmen.
Using
Aumentado's convergence strategy, the province, along with Rep. Adam Relson Jala
of Bohol 's 3rd District and the local government of Loboc spent P4 million for
the Tigbao bridge that spans the Loboc River .
The
only activity that got mixed with the inauguration spree was the groundbreaking
rites for the P1-million Loboc School of Music.
More
inaugurations are scheduled next week and next month.
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