Guimbal folk build own bridge
As local and regional officials wait for the Senate to pass the P8 billion Paglaum Bill that would fund rehabilitation projects around Region VI, residents of several barangays in Guimbal town took it upon themselves and built their own bridge.
In the sidelights of President Arroyo’s visit to lay the capsule for the rehabilitation of the Camangahan Bridge yesterday, Mrs. Maria Luisa Nalupano, a teacher at the Camangahan National High School pointed to the bamboo footbridge the residents constructed, without any funding from the government.
The improvised bamboo bridge stands beside where the old Camangahan bridge used to be, dwarfed by the latter.
The footbridge is fragile, supported only by boulders stacked on top of each other and held in place by a steel mesh wire.
Before it was washed away, the Camangahan bridge connects Guimbal to the town of Tubungan.
Residents of Brgys. Camangahan, Binanua-an, and the other nearby villages contributed materials and labor to build the meter-wide footbridge, which spans a narrow expanse of the Camangahan river. Students of the CMNHS also helped in the construction of the footbridge, because without it, they will have to take a longer route or wade and risk drowning in the river, Nalupano said.
“The residents contributed whatever they can,” she said.
Residents built the footbridge a month after Typhoon Frank. It has been washed away twice in the past after the river swelled. But everytime it is destroyed, the residents and the students would again build another on the same spot, Nalupano said.
Fragile it may be, everyday, about 2,000 residents and 600 students cross the bridge on their way to the town proper, or to the nearby high school, or on the way home, she said.
In her short message after the capsule-laying, President Arroyo said that the national government has advanced about P480 million for the rehabilitation of vital infrastructures in Panay island, pending the Senate’s approval of the Paglaum Bill.
“I am in here today to check on the status of the solutions to the problems caused by Typhoon Frank,” the President said. “The destruction has been great.”
The national government allocated P60 million for the rehabilitation of the bridge. As of June 2009, the government has already alloted around P1.8 billion for rehabilitation projects around Region VI, with majority of it, or about P1 billion, going to infrastructure.