Former LTO lot not fit for MCH—Belen
MAYOR Belen Fernandez slammed the majority councilors of Dagupan when they proposed that the P150-million Mother and Child Hospital (MCH) be located on a small patch of land vacated by the Land Transportation Office (LTO) located beside the Pantal River in Barangay Poblacion Oeste instead of the land donated to the Department of Health (DOH) in Barangay Pantal.
Fernandez said the requirement of the DOH as site of the MCH is 2,000 square meters with enough parking space. The lot vacated by the LTO is only 850 square meters as certified by City Assessor Roland Suni.
A DOH technical team that visited the former LTO site found it too small to accommodate even the facade of the proposed hospital, Fernandez said, showing to newsmen the engineering perspective of the proposed MCH.
She added that the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) will not approve the construction in the vacant lot recalling that the DPWH already stopped Barangay Pantal from building a structure around the bridge.
The majority in the city council led by Councilor Redford Erfe-Mejia is objecting to the construction of the MCH on a 1.2 hectare lot in Barangay Pantal donated to the DOH last year by the family of the mayor, citing that they will benefit from the development that will follow the establishment of the hospital.
Erfe-Mejia said during the September 17 council session that the majority councilors are not against the establishment of the MCH which, he said, was actually a vision of the late Mayor Benjamin Lim who wanted to put up the facility at the Juan P. Guadiz Elementary School, also in Poblacion Oeste, but was then opposed by then Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez.
Councilor and Minority Floor Leader Michael Fernandez corrected Erfe-Mejia and said the project fizzled out not because then VM Fernandez blocked it but because the Department of Education (DOH) did not agree to transfer the school to a three-storey building at the premises of the City Engineering Office, which was offered as a swap with the Juan P. Guadiz School site.
The majority bloc is blocking the establishment of the MCH by refusing to pass a resolution authorizing the mayor to sign a Memorandum of Agreement for the city with the DOH.
The P150-million fund will revert back to the national treasury if unused within the year. (Leonardo Micua)
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