The Davao city government has buckled down to revisiting its comprehensive land use plan to match the over-all development directions it has worked out in coordination with the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
“We are looking forward to a direction that will spread out development to include the uplands,” said lawyer Tristan Dwight Domingo, assistant city development officer.
Domingo joined JICA project leader Ken Kumazawa and National Economic Development Agency regional director Maria Lourdes D. Lim in appraising reporters on the project ‘Davao City Infrastructure Development and Capacity Building’ that outlined midterm and long-term strategies to sustain the city’s economic growth.
Kumazawa said JICA was committed to supporting the city develop its urban infrastructure as well as in training the NEDA and the city government in the planning and in the implementation of the plan.
Kumazawa said the experience of the Japanese city Kitakyushu shapes up as a model of development for the similarities it shares with Davao.
The city is located far from the Japanese capital, has almost the same population as Davao, has a disciplined constituency and is characterized as an environmentally sustainable city.
But Domingo said that based on Mayor Sara Duterte’s directive, the city will focus on revisiting the comprehensive land use plan, addressing the traffic and transportation concerns, implementing the law on solid waste management and in addressing the problem of floods.
He said under zoning or land-use plan, the city government is examining how agri-tourism could be developed and packaged.
The city, he said, is also inclined towards considering mass transport system to decongest the city’s main thoroughfares.
He said the city government has no other option but to take the lead in the implementation of Republic Act 9003 (Ecological Solid Waste Act) to compel the barangays to segregate their waste at source.
“We are guilty (as other LGUs) in not complying with the mandate of the law which is to segregate solid waste,” he conceded, adding that the city has no recourse except to implement waste segregation.
He added that city’s lone sanitary landfill “will be only to accommodate the city’s wastes in three to five years unless segregation is implemented.”
Lim identified several long-term projects in the pipeline that are projected to boost Davao City and its surrounding areas, to include a bypass road that will incorporate a 10-kilometer tunnel, a coastal bypass road, Sasa port modernization project, Mindanao railway, development and maintenance of Davao international airport and the Davao-Samal bridge.
She said the projects, once in place will help facilitate the formation of a Metro Davao set-up.
