[ Manila Bulletin Online ] May 4, 2008
By JEN L. JORVINA
MASBATE CITY -- Residents here thanked President Arroyo over the weekend for the launching last week of the Strong Republic Nautical Highway (SRNH) which covers 110.829 kilometers road network from Aroroy Port to Cawayan Port which is expected to reduce travel time and improve the basic delivery of services to boost economic development in the countryside.
"Masbate will be connected more extensively and with ease to the rest of the Visayas, Mindanao, and to Luzon with the nautical highway," said residents and mayors of municipalities along the route of the nautical highway.
In a briefing last week, Regional Director Orlando B. Roces of the Region 5 office of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) based in Legaspi City said that the Aroroy-Cawayan ports project is divided into three road sections of which 75.382-km is paved, 20.148-km is under construction, and the remaining 15.299-km has yet to be paved, improved or rehabilitated.
Roces identified to President Arroyo the road sections as Aroroy-Baleno- Lagda junction (35.869 km), Malinta-Buenavista junctions (43.205-km) and Buenavista-Cawayan junctions (31.755 -km).
"We have on-going projects between these intermittent road sections, connecting Aroroy Port to Cawayan Port, Aroroy Port to Esperanza Port and Masbate Port to Cawayan Port," Roces told the President.
In an interview, Assistant Regional Director Jaime B. Martinez, who is the concurrent district engineer for 3rd district engineering office of Masbate, said that 23.543-km of its 162.254-km Aroroy Port to Esperanza Port road section is under construction while Masbate City Port to Cawayan Port, 55.180-km of its 62.486-km stretch is paved and the remaining 7.306-km is still unpaved.
Martinez said that the unpaved portion will be funded in 2009 but President Arroyo, after walking through the unpaved portion of the road leading to Cawayan Port, directed DPWH Secretary Hermogenes E. Ebdane Jr. to immediately release the fund for 2008 so that the SRNH would be completed in Masbate province.
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