SPEAKER Pantaleon Alvarez has called on the Department of Transportation to speed up the building of the Light Railway Transit (LRT)–Metro Railway Transit (MRT) common station and to consider public welfare as its priority for the project.
Alvarez issued the call as the House committee on transportation, chaired by Catanduanes Rep. Cesar Sarmiento, resumed Wednesday afternoon its hearing on the common station project that will link LRT 1, MRT 3 and the forthcoming MRT 7.
“We have wasted so much time to implement this project. Even during the 14th Congress, it was established where the common station should be, in the interest of the public,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez said it was high time for the government to identify where the common station should be since funding for the project would come from the government, using the budget allocated by Congress.
“Let those who want to question the government do it in the proper venue,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez also asked DOTr officials “to start building, with or without a TRO [temporary restraining order], the common station that is in the interest of the riding public.”
He reminded the DOTr officials that Congress could always exercise its oversight function.
The Jan. 18, 2017 memorandum of agreement entered into for the common station was, according to several members of the committee, mired with anomalous and questionable provisions which could put the government at the losing end.
Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate earlier filed House Resolution 470, directing the committee to probe the DOTr’s decision to enter into a MOA and adopt former Transportation Secretary Emilio Abaya’s proposed compromise station between SM and Trinoma.
Zarate said the decision was an apparent attempt to appease competing business interests.
