GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 8 April) – The city council here is pushing for the creation of a special unit that will regularly evaluate the performance of construction companies implementing various infrastructure projects in the area.
Road construction workers in General Santos City. MindaNews file photo by BOBBY TIMONERA
The move was based on an ordinance passed by the council on Wednesday that adopted the comprehensive Constructors Performance Evaluations System (CPES) for local government-funded projects.
City Councilor Jose Edmar Yumang said Thursday the evaluation system mainly addresses the long-time problem of the city on the unreasonable delay in the implementation of some vital infrastructure.
He said the measure is based on the CPES guidelines approved by the National Economic and Development Authority.
It provides for the technical criteria for the evaluation of project contractors, specifically on workmanship, materials, time, facilities, environment, safety and health, and resources deployment.
Yumang, who co-authored the ordinance with City Councilor Dominador Lagare Jr., said the evaluation will be spearheaded by a proposed CPES-Implementation Unit (IU), which will be composed of engineers who are not directly involved in the implementation of the concerned infrastructure projects, he said.
He said the CPES-IU is expected to provide “objective and unbiased” evaluation of the contractors’ performance and provide the necessary recommendations to the local government.
Its evaluation will guide concerned city officials in terms of imposing sanctions on the erring contractors, he said.
“It could result to the blacklisting of contractors with ‘poor’ or ‘unsatisfactory’ CPES ratings,” he said in a statement.
Yumang said the city government may also terminate contracts for major violations, among them project slippages or delays, subcontracting and abandonment of work.
The local government had faced criticisms these past years due to the delayed implementation of infrastructure projects, some of them were reportedly abandoned by their contractors.
These include road improvement, installation of traffic lights, flood control or drainage construction and other priority projects.
Yumang said the city government and residents have suffered enough and learned their lessons from the irresponsible contractors and the “unforgivable practices must be put to an end.” “Hopefully, [there will be] no more delayed infrastructure projects in the future. This is the goal of this premier ordinance,” he said. (MindaNews)