It saddens us when government agencies that are supposedly fully staffed and have regional as well as district offices all over the country are outed as not actually having enough employees to perform their mandated tasks.
Such was the revelation to us by Lara Inguito-Esquibil, an engineer who also is an undersecretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), a government agency that’s been under intense public scrutiny lately due to its involvement in various controversies such as flood control projects worth billions of pesos.
The youngest undersecretary of the DPWH at the age of 36, Esquibil heads that particular section on Convergence Projects and Technical Services which she is very much capable of handling, judging by her sterling credentials. It isn’t very often that women are tasked to head such offices, but I am told that this young lady engineer seems to be slaying it so far.
Esquibil was at the Provincial Capitol in Cebu City last week as one of the resource speakers for a workshop event with Seermo, an urban mobility platform powered by artificial intelligence in the Philippines which is designed to help local government units (LGUs) collect and analyze transport data faster than traditional methods.
Some of the issues discussed at the event were about road-space usage, accessibility of public roads, sidewalks and vehicle traffic flow. It also took up other concerns like reporting of traffic accidents and transport infrastructure issues.
Right on the spot, I told myself, as my specific concern was about road safety audits (RSAs) which she admitted as being right down her alley. RSA is a formal, independent monitoring and review of a road or traffic plan, undertaken by an expert team that looks for safety risks as a way of preventing accidents.
Deeply troubled as we are about traffic accidents which have seemingly increased at an alarming rate in Cebu City recently, we raised with her the need for DPWH to fulfill its mandate of undertaking RSAs on our roads. After all, Cebu City currently records an average of 400 to 500 vehicular accidents each month, a huge increase from its previous baseline average of just 200 monthly accidents.
In reply, Esquibil told us the sad fact that her DPWH office only has five plantilla positions dedicated specifically for the RSA function. As such, the five RSA personnel under her are presently overwhelmed by having to roam all over the country to perform their job. No wonder, I told her, Cebu has had no record of its roads being subjected to RSAs at all.
Probably convinced by our plea, Esquibil, however, promised to do something about her lack of RSA staff in the coming days. For starters, she promised to empower LGUs to do RSAs themselves by training some of their qualified personnel to perform the tasks. This way, the LGUs can likewise subject local roads to RSAs, since the DPWH’s jurisdiction on RSAs is limited only to national roads.
We really hope Esquibil will keep her word and work right on it. Already, Cebu City averages 10 to 15 road accidents daily, with motorcycles accounting for 60 percent of these incidents, some ending in fatalities. Proactively identifying and correcting safety hazards through RSAs is an important step in transforming the city into a sustainable, smart and inclusive metropolis.
