Bohol Mirror

IF there’s a will, there’s a way, er… a processional road.

Pulling his latest act, Catigbian Mayor Roberto Salinas succeeded in getting P3M from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Central Office, to pave the town’s inner and outer religious processional roads.
The project, paving the town’s processional roads may not really pass government audit, observers once told Mayor Salinas, but that did not deter him to brave the odds.

The road is also owned by the government and the people who deserve to get their share of the taxes, Salinas explained.

For the national government funds, almost a kilometer of standard government public roads are paved in concrete, filled with standard shouldering materials and asserts the governor’s executive order reflecting the provisions of the national law on municipal roads, Mayor Salinas claimed.

And over comments that the fund could be out of order with the church benefiting from the government, the forward looking retired navy captain, now mayor said “there is no separation [of church and state] in cooperation.”

Leading the new breed of local executives whose leadership is characterized by innovative governance in partnerships, Salinas, who heads the League of Municipalites of the Philippines (LMP) Bohol Chapter admitted that it took him two visits to the public works office in Manila to get his P3M wish.

Granted by the DPWH Central Office and implemented by the District Engineers, the Catigbian municipal roads concreting project used the standard 3.5 meter from center of the road and includes road shouldering, says Salinas.

Still the only one of such in Bohol and possibly the only one in the entire country being granted the fund for such a project, the processional road, as the name suggests, is the premier road which the town‘s Mary Immaculate Parish uses in its religious processions.

“It consists of the inner and an outer road with a combined total length of almost a kilometer,” Salinas beamed as he relished in the singular pride of being the only town granted the fund despite the odds.

“Even the parish priest could not believe it could be done,” he said as he continued, I was just was so certain that if it would be for his people, then it is worth pursuing. (rachiu/PIA)