BALBALAN, Kalinga – Rep. Allen Jesse C. Mangaoang is pushing for the allocation of some P30 million from the annual budget of the public works department to bankroll the construction of a permanent bridge that will link the several sitios of Dao-angan here to major national roads that will guarantee the accessibility of residents to urban centers in the province.
Mangaoang,, who visited the families of the fatalities and the wounded victims of Tuesday’s tragic vehicular accident in a critical portion of the road, pointed out that the put up of the bridge linking several sitios of the barangay to the Pinuk-puk-Balbalan road and the Apayao-Mountain Province-Calanan road leading to Tabuk City will ensure safe travel of people from their place of origin to their desired destinations and vice versa.
“There was a bailey bridge in the area previously but it was heavily damaged by previous weather disturbance that visited the province. We also have a DPWH-DTI convergence road project in the area that is why we are looking on how to further improve the state of road networks in the locality,” Mangaoang stressed.
The lawmaker claimed that when he was the town’s local chief executive, he was able to complete the roads linking the municipality’s barangays to major national roadlines that is why he is also working on the improvement of the state of national roads to ensure safe and convenient travel of motorists going inside and outside the province.
Aside from the P5,000 financial assistance from the office of the congressman which he distributed to the families of the fatalities, he claimed that he is also working on the appropriate assistance that will be extended to those who were injured from the accident.
On the other hand, DPWH-Upper Kalinga District Engineering office officer-in-charge Engr. Teodoro Owek also visited the families of the victims of the accident and distributed financial and food assistance from their office apart from the 110 bags of cement and 140 pieces of steel bars which will be used for the construction of the tomb of the fatalities.
Owek supported the recommendation of Rep. Mangaoang for the construction of a bridge that will link the sitios of the barangay to major provincial and national roads considering that part of what will be programmed for the project will be the concreting and widening of narrow portions of the road for the benefit of safer and accessible travel to and from the affected villages.
It can be recalled that fourteen senior citizens died while twenty five others were injured when an alleged overloaded passenger jeepney plunged into an 80-meter ravine along the provincial road at Binalagan, Dao-angan, here, around 2:30 pm Tuesday.
Owek revealed that the place of incident is classified as a barangay road and improvements are being done in the place through a convergence project, saying that it was not the condition of the road that was the problem but it was the overloaded vehicle that might suffered from mechanical trouble which resulted to the occurrence of the tragic road crash that claimed the lives of the innocent senior citizens.
By HENT