DOT, DPWH present tourism road criteria
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By RACHEL ANNE V. BACONAWA
www.nordis.net
BAGUIO CITY — The Department of Tourism (DOT-CAR) and the Department of Public Works and Highways of the Cordillera Administrative Region (DPWH-CAR) presented the revised Tourism Road Infrastructure Project Prioritization Criteria (TRIPPC) in line with the DOT-DPWH Convergence Project on Enhancing Tourism Access at a meeting of the Association of the Government Information Officers of the Cordillera (ASGIOCO) held at the DOT-CAR office on Thursday, May 2.
The TRIPPC is the criteria set on prioritization of road rehabilitation projects that is connected to routes from one tourist destination to the other. Its main goal is to enhance access to tourist sites—its review and evaluation—to further provide assistance to the tourism feat in the affected area. It has three stages namely the pre-qualification, prioritization and readiness.
The first stage requires a Yes-No vote to five basic and technical factors including a concept study and a Project Development Map. The second stage consists of prioritization of proposed road projects in terms of their relative tourism importance while the final stage will be evaluated whether or not the project is ready or prepared for implementation.
DOT-CAR Regional Director Purificacion Suanding-Molintas disclosed that tourist arrivals in the Cordillera decreased by 4.54% in 2012. She added it is relatively higher than 18.33% decline in 2011. The flocking of visitors is still at its peak in the year 2006 with growth rate of 14.64%, two years after the SARS outbreak in 2004.
Also, Cordillera ranked 4th in the over-all island cluster ranking with 8.46% shares which translates to a total earning of P1,015,000 of profit to the Northern Philippines Tourism Cluster.
The Regional Director of the DPWH-CAR Edilberto P. Carabbacan gave an update on the status of road paving. He reported that the region already reached 1,424.445 km or 60% of the intended paving of 2,024.133 km of roads.
The total allocation on the paving costs P6,744,206 which is a 102% increase of budget because of the objective of President Benigno Aquino III to finish the project before the end of his term. The target is that by 2014, 285.652 km of road paving will be done with a proposed P8.57B-budget. These roads include corrections in Ambuclao and Loakan Road in Baguio City, Mountain Province, roads stretching from Kabugao to Solsona and the Banaue-Hungduan-Benguet boundary.
The DOT-DPWH Convergence Project on Enhancing Tourism Access aims to make National Tourism Development Programs (NTDP) come into a reality. One of the plan’s three main goals is to ‘improve market access, connectivity and destination infrastructure to liven the tourism of the country’.
Aside from road widening and paving, Molintas said that the construction of transportation terminals and beautification of priority airports are also part of the NTDP. She added that in North Luzon only Clark International Airport and Laoag International Airport are fit for business and that unfortunately, the Loakan Airport has no night landing devices and has poor navigational aids.
The convergence project was created through a Memorandum of Agreement under the Republic Act 9593 popularly known as Tourism Act of 2009. # nordis.net
