DAVAO CITY – Residents in the island province of Tawi-Tawi in southwest Mindanao are keeping private infrastructure contractors up on their toes following the creation of a citizen’s project monitoring team.
A road project involving the concreting of the Kepeng-Ungus Matata farm-to-market road has been left to residents themselves to monitor its progress after the World Bank-funded Philippine Rural Development Program (PRDP) organized and trained the residents of the barangay in the town of Tandubas.
The Project Support Office-Mindanao of the PRDP tapped the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to conduct the citizens’ monitoring training among selected residents to represent the barangay local government unit and farmer beneficiaries, including the school principal.
The local monitoring group has been credited for the high accomplishment rate of the road project. Started only on April this year, the construction notched 14.65 percent accomplishment as of August.
The road project covers 3.6 kilometers and expected to benefit some 4,317 farmers and residents in Barangay Kepeng and Tangngah Ungus Matata, whose main source of income are farming cassava, coconut, fishing, and seaweeds, the PRDP said in a news statement.
“Before the road construction here, it was really difficult for us, especially when we have to go home from farm bringing all our harvest. We usually carry our produce on the back since the path is really small and difficult to traverse. We used our body to transport our harvest,” the PRDP quoted farmer Timhar A. Jawali as saying.
The usual mode of transportation among farmers in delivering their farm produce was on foot or by using a wood wagon, it added. “If ever this project will be completed, we might not only use this wood wagon but maybe we can hire jeepneys to bring our harvest from the farm to the market,” the farmer said.
The monitoring group has been briefed on the role of citizen monitoring framework, to use various monitoring instrument, apply geo-tagging of subprojects and guidelines in social and environmental safeguard compliance monitoring.
“We are very thankful for the training especially on the very interesting lecture on I-BUILD component checklist and Social Environmental Safety. Before, we had no idea about monitoring the road project but thanks to PRDP, we can now help in monitoring,” said Principal Madsaib Sabbaha of Kepeng Elementary School.
Sabbaha said “this is the best project we have so far, there’s transparency because of the monitoring team.”
Aside from lectures, participants to the monitoring training conducted a project site visit, bunk house inspection and field testing of the monitoring instrument. The observations they noted during the field trip were consolidated and presented at the end of the training.
In the town of Ramon Magsaysay in Zamboanga del Sur, a new farm road brought another relief to farmers from their usual transport and handling fees because of inaccessibility of many farms in the interior barangays.
Recently, the PRDP-funded 11.88 kilometers road was started to traverse the five barangays of Gapasan, Laperian, Buenasuerte, Sambulawan and Navalan. Some 1,847 farmers and residents, involving 8,703 residents, are the projected beneficiaries to direct access of transportation.
With still 58.73 percent progress to go in the construction, or about five kilometers of concreted road, the PRDP said residents were already sharing experiences of significant changes in their transportation experience.
“We used to pay P30.00 per sack but the cost has gone down to P15.00 because of the accessible road,” said Jerry Bartolaba of Barangay Laperian.
He said it would be difficult on rainy days because vehicles do not come “while our products are already waiting to be fetched by the roadside”.
The inaccessibility of road also required most of the farmers in the barangay to double haul their products, which means they double the pay for the cost of labor, the PRDP added.
“From our farm to the highway we need to pay P25.00 to P30.00 per sack and from the highway to the center of Laperian we have to pay another P30.00. But now that there is a concrete passable road near our farm, we only spend P15.00 to bring our products in the highway and the truck will pick them up for delivery,” another farmer, Nomerlyn Batican, said
Also, students would no longer worry about the flooding or the muddy road during rainy days. “When somebody needs to be brought to the hospital, ambulance can respond immediately. Before this cemented road, houses were too far from each other, but now many transferred closer to the road,” Batican said.