DOTC committed to adhere to President Aquino’s 5 R’s

Angeles City Mayor Edgar Pamintuan, at one time the chair of the defunct Subic-Clark Alliance Development Council (SCADC), was reported to have “corrected” the figures cited by the Aquino administration on the North Luzon Railways (NorthRail) Project. (Inquirer, 9/3/11) We strongly take issue with Pamintuan’s deliberate attempt at disinformation and selective use of statistics to push his own agenda.

President Aquino was correct when he stated that the cost of the NorthRail Project has ballooned to approximately $2 billion, which refers to the total cost required to complete the entire Phase 1 of the project.

A brief backgrounder: Phase 1 of the NorthRail Project is supposed to link Caloocan with Clark, Pampanga. It is divided into two sections: Section 1—from Caloocan to Malolos—is 31 kilometers long and costs $593 million ($19 million/km); and Section 2, from Malolos to Mabalacat is 44 km long and costs $826 million ($19 million/km).

Oddly, Pamintuan omitted from his “guesstimate”  the link from Mabalacat to Clark (an additional 14 km), as well as from Caloocan to the Central Business District (CBD) of Metro Manila (an additional 12 km). If we are to sum up the cost of the whole stretch—from the CBD to Clark—including all the necessary upgrades to the system, the whole project will cost a total of $2 billion. The contractor for the NorthRail Project is Sinomach.

The $172-million increase Pamintuan indicated merely refers to the increase in the contract price of the project’s Section 1 (from Caloocan to Malolos). It does not refer to the contract for Section 2, and excludes the necessary upgrades to the entire NorthRail (Phase 1). As explained above, all these would bring the completed cost of the project to $2 billion.

We would like to reiterate that the current administration is committed to take the “matuwid na daan” by choosing the right projects, with the right cost that would benefit the populace. This is in line with President Aquino’s 5 R’s: “Right project, Right quality, Right people, Right cost and Right on time.”

—MARLOU B. UBANO,

Office of the Assistant Secretary for Legal Affairs,

Department of Transportation and Communications