No upgrade for Mindanao pier

OWING to budget and technical constraints, the Philippine government has significantly slashed funding for the upgrade of a port in southern Mindanao, effectively disallowing the facility from undertaking pier improvements.
       Of the P35 million requested by the Cotabato port for the year, the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) said it would only give P3.48 million for the facility, which is only sufficient to cover its repair and maintenance costs.
       Besides precluding the Cotabato port from undertaking wharf improvement, the budget cut will render the Mindanao pier unable to construct a transit shed, a two-storey terminal operations office, port police division building, and a terminal management port building.
       The decrease in allocation would also translate to the inability of the port office to reclaim and pave the shore area with concrete, as it has proposed earlier.
       Instead, the PPA would only give P833,000 funding for the general maintenance of Kalamansig Port and P340,000 for the repair of the passenger terminal and the steel gate.
       For the baseport in Cotabato, PPA allotted P707,500, mainly for the acquisition of a new baggage x-ray machine and for other repairs.
       About half of the funding, or P1.6 million, will go to the dredging of the Rio Grande de Mindanao channel between Bucana and the City Wharf, or the baseport.
       PPA said that the dredging project was needed since many ferry companies, including some the roll-on/roll-off operators, have already left the route due to lower depth as a result of siltation.
       The river port only has depth of 1.5 to 2.5 meters, which falls short of the minimum 4 meter draft requirement of larger barges. The river is a tributary of nearby elevated lands and requires specialized equipment to carry out the project.
       The river port, situated in the center of Cotabato City, serves as an essential artery to deliver goods. The said port, which has lower volumes compared with Davao, General Santos and Zamboanga, remains the lone gateway of passengers and cargo bound for inter-island destinations such as Kalamansig and Pagadian. VG Cabuag