DEPW Asks City for Maintenance Personnel

●DEPW: there’s a need for a maintenance team whose job is to focus on the maintenance of City equipment and vehicles.

The head of the Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) in Cebu City has admitted that in several occasions, his office had failed to immediately respond to the requests of the barangays for engineering works as that their equipment and vehicles, especially when it bogs down, will have to take repairs for several days.

Acting Cebu City Engineer Jose Marie Poblete explained that while there are several heavy equipment and vehicles that are assigned to the DEPW, his department does not have its own maintenance personnel and they are only depending to the maintenance team under the General Service Office (GSO).

Poblete said every time they encounter mechanical problem with their equipment, they will just request the GSO maintenance personnel to fix it. But because the GSO maintenance section is the only department tasked to repair all city and barangay-owned vehicles, including those assigned to the police, the completion of the repair would always be delayed.

“Usahay lagi, maikog kami sa mga opisyal sa barangay nga mo-request sa opisina og mga engineering works nga dili dayon namo maaksyonan kay daghan kaayo sa among mga ekipo ug mga sakyanan ang guba,” said Poblete.

Among the responsibilities of the DEPW are to maintain the city roads, declogging the drainage systems and to support other City Hall departments for equipment need.

To solve the problem, Poblete has suggested that there should be a maintenance team to be assigned to DEPW whose job is to focus the maintenance of equipment and vehicles, rather than to just depend to the maintenance personnel of GSO. Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella supported Poblete’s concern to assign maintenance personnel to his department so that the repair of their equipment would not be delayed.

But Labella said another solution to the problem is that the city should refrain from buying second hand equipment and vehicles.

“Tan-awon nato na ang concern ni City Engineer Poblete kay husto g’yud ‘sab tuod nga kinahanglan nga ang DEPW dunay
kaugalingon nga maintenance personnel apan angay g’yud nga kun mamalit ta og equipment dili g’yud mga second hand,” the vice mayor said.