36 BRIDGES COULD COLLAPSE DPWH warns overloaded trucks

BY JEZZA NEPOMOCENO
ILOILO City – Thirty-six bridges in Western Visayas are structurally weak and could collapse if overloaded trucks and buses continue to cross them, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in Region 6 warned.
These bridges need immediate replacement but the regional office of DPWH has no budget for this yet, said Engr. Danilo Peroy, chief of the Planning and Design Division.
To avert the collapse of these bridges, the law prohibiting the overloading of cargo trucks and buses passing national highways and bridges – Republic Act 8794 – must be strictly enforced, said Assistant Regional Director Gloria Dindin yesterday.
The law allows trailers and trucks to have a maximum axle load limit of 13.5 kilograms only to use national roads and bridges.
According to Peroy, the 36 unsafe bridges are located in the provinces of Aklan and Capiz (three each), Antique (eight), Iloilo and Negros Occidental (10 each) and in the cities of Bacolod and Iloilo (one each).
“These bridges need immediate replacement but the DPWH regional office has no money to build new ones,” Peroy said.
The most that the regional office has done so far was to post warning signs on these bridges.
The warnings included the allowable load limit that vehicles should have to cross these bridges, Peroy said.
The DPWH central office has already been informed about these bridges. The regional office is hoping for the release of funds to start fixing them right away, he added.
For her part, Dindin said the government spends billions of pesos to repair roads and bridges in the region because they deteriorate early due to overloaded trucks and buses crossing them.
“If we will not stop these overloaded trucks from crossing our national roads and bridges, more infrastructures will be ruined,” Dindin warned the public over radio-television program Reklamo Publiko.
Peroy said the 36 bridges were discovered to be structurally weak during a re-assessment/re-inspection conducted by the department’s Task Force on Buildings and Bridges last year yet.
The re-inspections were done in line with DPWH Secretary Rogelio Singson’s directive to regional offices to determine the structural integrity of bridges as part of disaster mitigation efforts.
Aside from the 36 bridges, 32 more were found to be needing of retrofitting – in Antique, Capiz and Guimaras with two bridges each, Iloilo (nine bridges), Negros Occidental (10 bridges) and Bacolod City (seven bridges).
Nineteen other bridges (four each in Aklan and Bacolod City, one each in Capiz and Iloilo, and nine in Negros Occidental) need maintenance and repair.
Also present in yesterday’s Reklamo Publiko program were DPWH-6 spokesperson and officer-in-charge of the Iloilo City District Engineer Office, Engr. Jose Al Fruto; Chief of Staff, Engr. Marilou Zamora; Maintenance Division chief, Engr. Norma Delnguines; and Construction Division chief, Engr. Marilyn Celiz./PN