By EVMWB
Borongan City–The fifth-class municipality of Maslog in Eastern Samar finally received a renewed hope of development with soon-to-be constructed paved roads, even bridges, that would connect it to the neighboring town of Jipapad.
Last May 26, House Minority Flood Leader Marcelino Libanan (4Ps party-list representative) led the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Maslog-Jipapad Road Project to the delight and relief of the people of this landlocked town in the northernmost part of the province.
Maslog—a town of about 6,000 population spread in 12 barangays—had been often tagged in jest as the “last town” of Eastern Samar for being always the last municipality to received services from the national government due to its lack of access road to and from the national highway where the adjacent Jipapad is located.
Forty-nine-year-old Alberto Nuguit, barangay chairman of Tugas, a farming village sitting at the boundary of Maslog and Jipapad, remarked while he listened to the politicians’ reassuring vows to connect the town to its neighbors via paved roads and bridges.
“They looked sincere but I hope this time there will really be a functional road,” he whispered to a media reporter during the groundbreaking event. “We had been promised many times over in the past but, look, we remain isolated from our neighboring towns,” he said in Leyte-Samarnon language.
Nuguit, 49, is the barangay captain of Tugas, a farming village that nestles between Maslog and Jipapad towns which happen to be the two most economically depressed municipalities in Eastern Samar. From his village to the town proper, the most viable means of transportation is kuliglig, which is run by a tractor machine where fare is P50 per head for the five-kilometer ride.
“It is difficult and expensive to bring our crops to the market,” adds Federico Bergonio, barangay chairman of San Roque, a village three kilometers farther from the town center. “We pay P100 per sack to bring our crops to Tugas where transportation to the town is available.”
The relatively easier access to Maslog from the next town of Dolores is a four-hour travel on a samban, a motorized banca without outriggers, through the Dolores river. There is an unfinished 34-km road that was started more than 15 years ago from Carolina junction of Dolores to Maslog but it has since then deteriorated to a rutted dirt road.
“If only the bridges to Dolores were completed, we could bring our emergency patients to the hospital despite the bad road even during rainy days,” said Nuguit further.
He was referring to Hinolaso Bridge 1, Hinolaso Bridge 2, Hinolaso Bridge 3, and Villahermosa Bridge that were constructed earlier at a total cost of P212.48 million. He said these bridges are inutile, however, because there are no approaches built and these are elevated much higher than the road purportedly to avoid of being flooded.
leaving the bridges hanging in the air. The bridges are too high as they were designed based on the highest flood that occurred in the last 25 years.
The bridge projects have two phases: construction of substructures worth P97.83 million; and construction of the superstructures with road components of 2.5 kilometers amounting to P114.64 million funded under the Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (PAMANA) program, which is a government intervention to develop isolated or hard-to-reach municipalities.
There were instances that these bridges were impassable. When it rains hard for days, water in Dolores river swells submerging the bridges and flooding communities along the river bank thus boating through it with samban is dangerous.
Engineer Margarita Junia, assistant regional director of the Department of Public Works and Highways, inspected the bridge last year and promised to complete within that year the construction of the four bridges including the provision of embankment and construction of the approaches. It did not happen, though.
Now with Libanan, a former representative of the lone district of Eastern Samar, coming into the picture, people said there is renewed hope for development under the Marcos administration. Libanan, a staunch political ally of PBBM, said he will work hard to get additional funds to complete the entire project this time.
The DPWH regional office, which is the implementing unit, awarded a P100-million contract on Thursday for the 1.5735 lane kilometer road concreting, which is a portion of the road section of 21-kilometers distance from Maslog to Jipapad.
Maslog Mayor Heraclio Santiago said he is confident that road projects that will finally connect his town to the national highway will be realized under the present administration. He said these projects are already long overdue as he expressed his optimism that this will bring development to his town.
“There may be few voters here but development must also be done here if only to have peace and order in our province,” said Santiago, adding that Maslog with other economically deficient towns around it were the hotbed of activities of the NPA terrorists sometime in the past.
During the community interaction of the Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (TF-ELCAC) in three villages of Maslog, the issues of lack of access to education and other basic services were bared as the main reason of the people’s support to the insurgents.
“There was a great distance between the government and the people,” he said. “These infrastructure projects, especially the roads, will bring the government nearer to the people. They will not only bring development, but also peace and order for the whole Eastern Samar province,” the mayor said.
Libanan told the crowd at the groundbreaking rites that PBBM has personally mandated him to look into the development projects in the whole Samar island to ensure the provision of a complete road network in the island.
In February, Libanan also led the groundbreaking and capsule-laying ceremony for the construction of a road from the junction of the national highway at Brgy. Carolina to Maslog road (barangays Magsaysay-Magongbong-Gap-ang) section; and the concreting of Dolores-Maslog road. –Elmer Recuerdo-