Marawi rehab to start in August or September —task force chief

The rehabilitation of battle-torn Marawi City is targeted to start in late August or early September once the government chooses a company which will undertake the project, according to Task Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM).

“Our indicative time table, if everything goes smoothly and we have a successful negotiation, the ground breaking in Marawi City might be in last week of August or first week of September,” TFBM chairman Eduardo Del Rosario told GMA News Online on the sidelines of the International Conference on Human Settlements Planning and Development in Makati City on Tuesday.

Del Rosario also heads the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), which leads the TFBM with the assistance of the Office of Civil Defense as secretariat and with various government agencies heading the subcommittees.

Negotiations with the Chinese-led Bangon Marawi Consortium, which the task force initially selected, failed early in June.

“Unfortunately, ‘yung na-select namin initially was not able to comply sa requirements natin on financial and technical,” Del Rosario noted.

Bangon Marawi Consortium consists of five Chinese and four Filipino companies, including China State Construction Engineering Corp. Ltd., Anhui Huali Construction Group Co. Ltd., China Geo Engineering Corp., TBEA Co. Ltd., Shandong Jinyuan Homes Industry Development Co. Ltd., Future Homes PH Inc., A. Brown Co. Inc., HS Pow Construction Inc., and SD Realty & Development Inc.

China State Construction Engineering Corp. and China Geo Engineering Corp. were blacklisted in 2009 by the World Bank for supposedly colluding with local companies in rigging the bidding of road projects partly financed by the multilateral lender in 2004.

The Palace has said that the blacklisted firms deserve a “second chance.”

Now that Bangon Marawi is out of the picture, Del Rosario said the TFBM is in talks with the Power Construction Corp. of China or PowerChina, the second company that expressed its intent to participate in the Marawi rehabilitation.

“Definitely, the end result of the negotiation is the conferment of the original proponent status. And then once it is conferred, the following day it is published and the Swiss Challenge starts,” Del Rosario said.

On how much it will cost the government in hiring PowerChina to do the job, he said it has yet to be determined by ongoing negotiations. The company is expected to submit a formal proposal this week, which will also be the basis of determining the project cost.

The government has peg at P53.417 billion the amount needed to finance the full rehabilitation of areas outside ground zero.

Del Rosario said the rehabilitation will be completed by the last quarter of 2021.

“We are very confident that even with the ground breaking in August, September, or October ... we can complete the rehabilitation of Marawi by December of 2021,” he said. —VDS, GMA News