DAVAO CITY, Philippines — The Davao City Engineer’s office plans to create a task force with private and government agencies in a bid to address the city’s traffic congestion problem.
Atty. Dominic Joseph Felizarta, the newly appointed city engineers head announced their proposed plan on drafting Executive Order (EO) to create a task force together with Department of Public Works and Highway (DPWH), Davao City Water District (DCWD), and other private agencies to address the traffic situation.
Felizarta said the purpose of the task forces is to coordinate road projects.
“Sometimes we can see that a particular agency is excavating the road here and if that project will be finished another agency will excavate that road. So that is the purpose of the task force, to coordinate,” he said today during the Kapehan sa SM media forum.
Felizarte cited the case of the drainage system constructed by the DCWD along Quirino Avenue.
“They can’t put back what they dug up so they just used filling materials. We already call the attention of the DCWD about this but as you can see now they may not put it back but at least people can now pass through it,” he said.
Felizarte said that the task force would require the agencies to coordinate with them in implementing road projects.
Aside from coordination, Felizarte said they also want the agencies to present their projects and timeline to the city under the EO.
Felizarte said they still have to finalize their EO before presenting it to Mayor Sara Duterte.
“This is just an idea that we came up in a meeting two weeks ago with the City Administrator and the City Legal Office together with DCWD and in fact we will conduct another meeting to finalize,” he said.
Felizarte added that the task force would also cover the drainage plan of the city.
However he clarified that the existing Drainage Management Unit (DMU), an agency now placed under the City Engineers Office, will “focus on the cleaning, while the task force will focus on the coordination.”(davaotoday.com)
