Leyte town gets P70-M farm-market road

PALO, Leyte — Farm to market roads are meant to ease the transport of goods to the market but in a town in Leyte, school children were the first to rejoice when the Department of Agrarian Reform regional office in Eastern Visayas released P70 million for the construction of two such roads.

Feona Retes, chief of the Cangumbang village in this town, explained that bad road condition has been a burden not only in the transport of the farmers’ harvest but also of school children.

Cangumbang village is three kilometers away from the town center where the children go to school. When it rains these children have to wade through mud and flood water to go to school, but some would skip classes.

This week, though, DAR, together with the Department of Public Works and Highways and the local government unit of Palo, led the groundbreaking for the road concreting project.

DAR regional Director Robert Anthony said the agency has earmarked P70 million for the construction of two farm-to-market roads in this town — the 4.10 kms Cangumbang-San Agustin and 1.5-km. San Agustin-Cabarasan Daku roads.

Yu said the construction of farm roads is among the nine priorities of Agrarian Secretary Conrado Estrella III and among the top agenda of the Marcos administration.

He said they are set to implement five FMR projects in the whole province of Leyte this year including the two roads in Palo.

Edgar Cabaluna, Municipal Agrarian Reform Program Officer, said that more than 600 agrarian reform beneficiaries are expected to benefit from the two roads alone.

Palo Mayor Remedios Petilla said the construction of FMRs will inspire farmers to plant more because it will be easier now to bring their harvest to the market.

Petilla said the roads were opened in 2014 through DAR’s Agrarian Reform Communities Project funded by the Asian Development Bank. However, these roads were not paved until the construction of FMR.