The Dumaguete City Engineer’s Office has washed its hands on the perennial flooding of barangay Banilad, saying it is the Department of Public Works and Highways that has jurisdiction over waterways.
City Engineer Edwin Quirit said the source of the flooding in Banilad is primarily the Ocoy River in nearby Valencia town.
Quirit said that while the City is trying its best to find ways to solve the problem, it can only do so much.
The CEO, he said, is relying on the DPWH to help the city government institute flood control measures and perhaps allocate funding for the same.
Until today, the DPWH has not yet replied to the City’s letter last August, requesting for help regarding the perennial flooding problem in Barangay Banilad.
Another letter was sent after the massive flooding last October 18, 2017 caused by unusually heavy rainfall here due to Typhoon Paolo.
Heavy rains late Thursday evening through dawn Friday caused flooding in the portion of the road leading to the slaughterhouse and down to the national highway, carrying sand, debris and mud.
Some residents had to wait for the water to subside before they could leave their homes.
The CEO and the 2nd Engineering District of the DPWH deployed personnel for clearing operations while civilians also took the opportunity to haul sand from the roadside either for personal consumption or for economic reasons.
Engr. Quirit further disclosed that Dumaguete Mayor Felipe Antonio Remollo has instructed him to coordinate with the City Assessor’s Office and the City Planning and Development Office to identify lot owners whose property is along the affected road for possible donation for the construction and/or expansion of drainage canals.
The list is now with the Banilad village chief Raul Bana, who disclosed in a separate interview on Friday that many of these lot owners are not willing to donate a portion of their property to the city.
Quirit admitted the need to negotiate with these lot owners and let them understand the urgency in building flood control structures like ripraps to address the flooding problem.
Engr. Quirit said he and other city officials are awaiting the go-signal from the village chief, Raul Bana, for a dialogue with residents and other stakeholders to regarding the problem.
As for Bana, he said he will call for a dialogue in early December, as he debunked claims by some affected residents that he and other barangay officials are “indifferent” to the flooding problem and could not even be seen at the areas affected by the flooding.
According to Bana, he and some of his men are usually at the highway to help in clearing operations although he admitted not being able to move inwards because the road is sometimes rendered impassable.
Bana stressed that the flooding problem in this part of Banilad was one of his priorities when he was first elected into office in 2013.
In fact, in early 2014, he wrote a letter to the former mayor of Dumaguete, now Rep. Manuel Sagarbarria of the 2nd district, regarding the perennial flooding in Banilad.
This problem was already brought to the attention of city officials even during the time of the later former Dumaguete mayor and Negros Oriental governor Agustin Perdices, Bana stressed.
At the moment, the city government does not have any immediate concrete solution to the problem but Engr. Quirit hopes to find one if everybody cooperated.
Connie Gregore, a Person-With-Disability (PWD) and who resides in Banilad, said that when she left their home on Friday morning for work, the flooding had already started.
She said she had no choice but to keep going, getting her feet and legs and her chair wet.
Because she cannot walk with her lower limbs, she uses a plastic chair as her “legs and feet” to be able to move around.
She lamented that her complaints, as well as that of other residents in her part of Banilad, have fallen on deaf ears for a long time now.
The PWD is hoping that city officials will pay her neighborhood a visit because the flooding gets worse each time the heavy rains come. (Metro Post/with a report from Judy Flores Partlow/PNA)
