A road pavement project costing P110 million involving the Dauis-Panglao central highway is fast becoming a major scandal after widespread cracks are noticed all over the “finished portion” of the five-kilometer stretch. The concreting job starts from Poblacion Dauis to Tinago, the town's boundary with Panglao. Although the giant project is yet to be finished, road cracks are evident to the bare eye even as vehicular traffic was regulated to pave the way for the concrete to season. Declared as a tourism highway, the stretch of road was bidded for concreting in the regional office of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). A joint venture of Tarlac-based construction companies won the bid to undertake the project. They are the 4 J Construction and Northern Builders.
The sad state of the Dauis side of the project attracted attention from Panglao Mayor Benedicto Alcala after he was informed that the same contractors are casting a moist eye on the Panglao side of the project amounting to P100 million. The continuing project is slated for bidding in the DPWH regional office. Almost on a daily basis, Mayor Alcala said he was a frequent user of the central road. It was Mayor Alcala as a motorist who noticed the sub-standard concreting works. Then, he blew the whistle on the construction anomaly. According to the Panglao mayor, he cannot be fooled into believing that the pavement job was above board. He said that he chanced upon the construction crew pouring concrete into a sub-standard base course.
Mayor Alcala said, as one who understands a little aspect of construction, he believes that for a base course to be passable to civil works standards, such aggregates as anapog (Item 101) or limestone and crashed stones are the ideal requirements for sound and correct base course preparations. The Panglao mayor made the “right noises” for fear that in the finger-pointing that may come as a result of construction lapses, he would be free from any blame. As a veteran town executive, he recalled with clarity that mayors shared the blame when issues of this kind cropped up especially during elections. He anticipated that he cannot escape blame when highway construction in his area becomes an election issue.
SUB-STANDARD BASE PREPARATIONS
In the case of the Dauis-Panglao concreting project, no such standard preparations were in place of its base. It was learned that after the contractors' version of preparing the base for concreting was in place, a little compaction was done by a small compactor, poured concrete and voila! it was all over. Base course preparations represent 30% of the project cost. This means that in the project costing of P110 million, P33 million is the budget for its base. In the case of the Dauis-Panglao project, the contractors must have skipped the major undertaking of an ideal base course preparations when they discovered that the road foundation was cut out for a “construction short cut”. Before the joint venture embarked on the concreting project, the contractors removed a six-month old asphalt overlay costing the government P7 million. Undertaken by Luym Construction, the asphalt overlay project was only six months old when it was removed to pave the way for the pavement works.
ADLAON REACTION
Appraised of the sad spectacle of an unfinished project besieged with construction deficiency, Engr. Celestino Adlaon, first high highway district engineer, ordered the contractors that “sections with cracks beyond remedial measures should be removed and replaced”. The contractors in question did make remedial measures in an apparent move to hide the lapses in the paving job. They did so by applying asphalt sealant in the cracks that run parallel to the road contour. According to construction engineers, applying sealants may be good only to the joins of the road project. But applying the same in spider-like cracks is a no-no in a good construction project. It may be noted that the same Luzon-based contractors also won a bid to undertake another concreting project in a portion of the Sierra-Bullones-Jagna road artery. Worth P89 million, nobody is telling what this project looks like at this point, when the volume of vehicle and pedestrian traffic is not as huge as in the Dauis-Panglao highway. (With reports from Roger Balamad)
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