After getting stalled for about four years, the planned multi-million peso passenger port terminal here continues to hit a snag and Dumaguete City Mayor Agustin Perdices has expressed concern that the project may not be completed, at all.

If the bidding of the project will not push through before the end of the year, the more than P100 million funding for the facility will be reverted back to the national government, since under the law, funding for a project that was not completed will be returned to the general fund of the government at the end of the year, Perdices said Friday.

The effort to put up a modern port facility in Dumaguete began in the late 90s but suffered at the outset from strong opposition from Silliman University because the original design of the proposed project was believed to be detrimental to the environment and the historical value of the university.

City Administrator Dominador Dumalag said beginning 2002, the city government vigorously pushed the project with a significant revision to the plan and finally got the nod of Silliman.

He said in 2004, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even led the ground breaking of the project, but then later on, the PPA informed the city government that the undertaking cannot be pushed through because the proposed site is still being litigated.

Dumalag said the plan was modified with the United Architects of the Philippines that voluntarily made the architectural design.

He added that the design was revised four time times already, which he said was very frustrating especially for the city and for architects Bobby Doray and Din Sinco, who were in the lead in the drafting of the architectural design of the terminal, "without a single centavo remuneration".

But Dumalag said the present leadership of PPA in the city is now also trying its best for the project would push through.

However, he said the design will have to be revised again to lessen the amount of the project to below P100 million, because under the rules of the PPA, projects amounting to P100 million and more will have to be deliberated on by the PPA board, which apparently takes time. *RA

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