The Department of Agriculture (DA) through the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) is set to implement the P117 Million farm to market roads that stretch to 6.5 kilometers from Barangay Maruyogon-Lucbuan-Buenavista.
The project was proposed by the city government of Puerto Princesa as early as April 2015. The project area has a total of 1,305 households, while 1,148 households are farmers and fisherfolk.
During the 2-day citizens monitoring training held at A&A Plaza Hotel on December 19-20, 2019, the PRDP introduced the citizens monitoring tool to the three barangays of Maruyugon, Lucbuan, and Buenavista who will form part of the team composed of Barangay Inspection Team represented by barangay officials, representatives from the academe and people’s organizations in the area, and stakeholders.
The citizen’s monitoring training participated by close to 50 participants from the three barangay, city government, representative from the BCT Construction who is the contractor of the project, and other stakeholders are intended to capacitate the monitoring team on how to monitor the different phases of FMR project activities, to ensure its smooth implementation.
Aside from Puerto Princesa City, the PRDP has ongoing projects in Roxas and Aborlan towns.
The PRDP said that the project was pushed to provide a safe convenient and cost-effective road in the area, thereby minimizing transport operation and maintenance cost, increase mobility and reduce travel time, increase traffic count in the three barangays, reduced high transportation loses from 42% to only 8%.
The PRDP further said that the FMR project is expected to reduce input hauling cost by 90% (from 100pesos to only 10 pesos) and in the cashew production, this is expected to expand the production area by 195 hectares, from only 116 hectares existing cashew plantation to 311 hectares.