COTABATO CITY – The construction works for a PHP46.115-million building of the Department of Public Works and Highways in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (DPWH-ARMM) will soon start in Buluan town, Maguindanao.
Maguindanao Governor Esmael Mangudadatu, together with DPWH-Maguindanao officials, on Wednesday led the groundbreaking ceremony for the department’s second engineering district office in Maguindanao at the site of the building construction in Barangay Poblacion, Buluan.
The new DPWH office is located just across the new provincial capitol building, in a land donated by the governor’s family.
Mangudadatu said the facilities being built in the capitol grounds are expected to be completed early next year.
“The DPWH people can fully and easily concentrate with their work in the province’s second district through this office,” Mangudadatu told reporters during the ceremony.
The governor said he envisions Buluan to be the next Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, where major government agencies are located in one space.
“We are putting up a one-stop-shop type of government services where clients need not go to different offices located in different areas. Here, your government transaction is over in a day,” Mangudadatu told reporters in Filipino.
The provincial capitol building and the DPWH district office are the pioneering structures in the proposed government center in the province.
“More government buildings are in the pipeline, ready to rise in this provincial capital,” Mangudadatu said.
DPWH-Maguindanao second engineering district office chief, James Mlok, said funding for Phase 1 of the building was drawn from the 2016 regional budget, and has undergone a transparency check in accordance with current government bidding procedures prior to its construction approval.
Mlok said he and his staff are currently holding office at the DPWH-ARMM head office in Cotabato City, which is more than 100 km. from Buluan. (Noel Punzalan and Edwin Fernandez/PNA)
