Cebu City Buys PHP35M Worth of Equipment for Road Repairs, Dredging Creeks

The Cebu City Government has bought five brand new heavy equipment units worth more than PHP35 million to be used for road repairs and maintenance and dredging of waterways.

Engr. Jose Marie Poblete, Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) chief, said the equipment turned over to them by the supplier, Civic Merchandising Inc., include two vibratory compactors, one hydraulic excavator, one long arm hydraulic excavator and one wheel excavator.

Poblete said the new fleet of equipment will allow them to address the 30 to 40 requests from the city’s 80 barangays every month for assistance on road maintenance and drainage projects.

He said the long arm excavator can be used in cleaning rivers and creeks that are heavily silted.

The compactors, on the other hand, can be used in asphalting and repairing roads while the excavators can be used in road maintenance and clearing operations.

Poblete said the new equipment will be a big help to the daily operations of DEPW.

“It’s hard to respond to the needs or requests of the barangays if we don’t have the equipment. If we need to be effective, we have to have a full fleet of heavy equipment,” he said.

Poblete said the DEPW owns some 42 heavy equipment but only 25 of them are operational. The 17 others are under repair.

He said that bulk of their equipment was acquired in the 1990s yet, although a few were bought in 2012.

Poblete said the cost of the five new equipment units was taken from the PHP185-million budget for heavy equipment of DEPW this year.(PNA) CTB/EB/PJN