Ocbo: Traffic impact assessment a must to acquire building permit

THE Traffic Impact Assessment (TIA) has been included as one of the requirements for building permits, an official from the Office of the City Building Official (Ocbo) said.

This requirement, according to Ocbo acting assistant Joseph Dominic Felizarta, will be for commercial establishments and for big subdivisions.

Felizarta, speaking in yesterday’s I-speak media forum, also said that the reason for the delays that owners experience while processing their business permits is mainly caused by requirements which are processed on other different government agencies.

“Actually, dili pana musulod sa amu daghan nag agihan before na siya muabot sa amung office so mao na ang wala nasabtan sa public (Actually, building permits will not automatically reach our office, it would still go through many agencies before it will reach our office and the public do not under- stand that),” he said.

Felizarta also said that violations in business permits also delay the process.

“Pag-send namo sa letter of violation, usually tawagon nalang namo ang engineer ug ang owner mismo, mao nga ginapangayuan namog number, nga naay problema

sa ilahang building (When we send the letter of violation, we usually call the engineer and the owner, that’s why we ask for their number, when there’s a problem with their building),” he said.

“So with that, naay delay, ang problema among office ang nasugnod nga dugay (There’s a delay and our office is being blamed for it),” Felizarta said.

They also give three days for the applicants to comply with the building permit requirements so as to follow the 72-hour security mandate of the City Mayor for processing documents.

“Dali raman (secure requirements) kay ginatudluan man na sila sa among evaluator unsay buhaton. Syempre naa jud tay plano sa yuta, titulo sa yuta unya signed by different technical persons. (Actually, it is easy to secure the requirements because they are being instructed by our evaluator on what to do. Of course, we have that plan for the property, title of the property and it should also be signed by different technical persons.),” Felizarta said.

To address the issue, Felizarta said that they are conducting pre-assessment wherein they let the owner submit a draft of their plan so they can check violations and owners can address it before processing their building permits.

For the TIA, which will go through the Traffic Board that only meets on a monthly basis, Felizarta said they have already asked them to conduct special meetings in order to address the traffic assessment.