CEBU CITY – Presidential Assistant for the Visayas, Michael Lloyd Dino, expressed full support to proposals that will grant President Rodrigo Duterte emergency powers to solve the traffic problem in Metro Manila, and other big cities like Cebu.
Dino backs proposal made by Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade to give Duterte emergency powers to solve road congestion in the remaining three years of his term. He said this proposal is backed with facts and realities.
He wanted Metro Cebu to be included in the scope of the presidential emergency powers, saying that the metropolis has been “experiencing traffic congestion due to lack of mass transport system and narrow roads not having been widened for so many years.”
According to Dino, unresolved traffic problem in Metro Cebu has caused at least P1.1 billion in economic losses a day. “I am confident that our lawmakers will look into Sec. Tugade’s proposal. Lawmakers who frequent Metro Manila to attend to their official functions have also experienced being stuck in traffic in Metro Cebu,” Dino told the Philippine News Agency.
Dino also recalled having proposed to include Metro Cebu when Tugade pushed for the emergency powers on the side lines of the presentation of 10-point socio-economic agenda of the Duterte administration at the SMX Convention Center in Davao City on June 21, 2016. “I have presented our case in Metro Cebu when the idea on emergency powers was hatched in Davao in 2016. The national government supported our cause and local government officials supported the call to include us in case Congress passes that emergency powers bill,” he said.
Dino said he attended several public hearings by the House of Representatives Committee on Transportation, headed by Rep. Cesar Sarmiento of Catanduanes, and pitched in strategies on how to solve the traffic problems in Metro Cebu. “It has long been recognized that Metro Cebu’s traffic is brought about by lack of efficient mass transport system and overcapacity of our existing roads,” he said, stressing that “while the crisis is still manageable, we need to act now”. Dino said Tugade has offered Metro Cebu a “basket of solutions” to solve the traffic woes.
“The Cebuanos believe that such emergency powers will hasten the implementation of infrastructure projects aimed to add more capacity on our existing roads and the mass transport backbone which is the Light Rail Transit,” he noted.
He said he already conducted a series of consultation with the local government units in Cebu, the business community, and the regional executives from transportation-related agencies of government to ferret out more ideas on how to solve the woes on Metro Cebu’s thoroughfares. (John Rey Saavedra)
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