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. The 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. Some 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.