P298-million World Bank road project to help Kalinga farmers

Tabuk City, Kalinga—It’s all systems go for the groundbreaking of two World Bank (WB) fund­ed farm-to-market road (FMR) projects amount­ing to P298 million in the province of Kalinga under the Philippine Ru­ral Development Project (PRDP).

Provincial Agricultur­ist Domingo Bakilan said the 13-kilometer Ban­neng-Gombowoy FMR in Tanudan town cost P118 million, while the 15.8-km Bulanao-Amlao FMR in Tabuk City cost P180 million.

Construction of the FMRs will start with­in seven days after the pre-construction confer­ence, Bakilan said.

The technical team from the Project Support Office of the PRDP will meet with the contractors and stakeholders of the projects right at the proj­ect sites for the briefing on the environment and social components of the projects, he added.

These infrastructure projects support the coffee industry in the province, as it will provide access to Kalinga’s top coffee-producing areas in Tanudan and Upper Tabuk town.

Bakilan said prepara­tion for the projects took almost a year before the Letter of No Objection No. 2 was issued, which finally gave the go-signal to start this project this year.

The Banneng-Gom­bowoy FMR will be com­pleted within 400 days, while the Bulanao-Amlao FMR will be finished within 500 days.

Under the PRDP, the local government unit-re­cipient and the national government both share a 10-percent equity of the project cost. On top of its counterpart, the prov­ince also shouldered the P7-million bridge project of the Bulanao-Amlao FMR project.

Since the projects are funded by the World Bank, these are not cov­ered by the election ban, Bakilan said.