28 new school buildings to be constructed in Leyte for 2017

TACLOBAN CITY, May 1 -- The Department of Education (DepEd) School Building Program has approved the construction of 28 projects with a budget of PHP282.7 million to address the need for more classrooms with the start of the school year this June.

The 28 school building projects are being carried out by the 2nd Leyte Engineering Distict (2nd LED) of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and to be undertaken in different schools within Leyte's second district. 

Of the 28 projects lined up for this year, 10 of these have already been completed and 14 are ongoing construction, based on the report of the 2nd LED. Four of the school building projects have yet to start due to site problems.

District Engineer Carlos G. Veloso said, in a mobile phone interview on Monday, that they were presently ensuring that all sites were suitable for school building construction through a thorough inspection and soil exploration.

“This is very important to ensure that our school buildings are very reliable and typhoon resilient,” Veloso said.

DepEd’s school building construction program proved to be very challenging for the engineering office as some sites failed to pass the subsurface  soil exploration survey, leading to cost adjustment, and search for alternative sites.

Veloso, however, added the office would enforce strict monitoring of the school buildings to be constructed to ensure that it would follow the new calamity-resilient specifications.

The new school building design takes into consideration human dimensions, applicable building codes, green building adaptation, effects of climate change, calamity-resilience, withstanding strong typhoons and major earthquakes and compliance with the National Structural Code of the Philippines 2010.

The construction of additional school buildings and classrooms with almost a fifth of Deped’s PHP543 billion budget this year will be used to construct new school buildings across the country, it was learned.

In the 2017 budget, DepEd was also allowed to use a maximum of one percent of the PHP109.3 billion as a buffer fund to cover unforeseen changes in the detailed engineering design such as additional costs for hauling, site adaptation, demotion cost and changes in foundation. (Ahlette C. Reyes/PNA)