FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. Mayor Pamintuan signs MOA with the Rotary Club of Angeles’ Florante C. Timbol, Bishop David, and Bishop Briones in the presence of other environmental advocates.
Photo courtesy of Angeles CIO
ANGELES CITY – Government. Church. Civic groups. A living example of what public-private partnership (PPP) for development should really be.
Thus said Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan of the memorandum of agreement the city signed Wednesday with the Curia Sancti Rosarii and the Rotary Club of Angeles for the promotion, protection and preservation of the environment.
“We still have a long way to go, but through our partnership with the Rotary Club and the Church, we have made the necessary steps to mitigate the effects of climate change and enhance the state of the city’s natural environment,” Pamintuan said.
The city government conducts the monthly “Lingap king Balen, Sagip Sapang Balen” program where people rally together to conduct regular clean-up drives and declog the city’s waterways from the accumulated garbage coming from the residents of the nearby creeks. It is undertaken every Saturday.
The Holy Rosary Parish, headed by San Fernando Auxiliary Bishop Pablo Virgilio S. David, has initiated its own campaign to clean the city’s principal waterways through its Sagip Sapang Balen Movement.
Two years ago or in the previous administration, the bishop even cast a “sumpa” on the polluters of the Spang Balen Creek, if only to scare those who dumpngs their wastes on the waterway.
As mandated in the MOA, from the initial phase of environmental awareness, the campaign shifts to the enforcement of environmental laws.
“Phase two will allow us to impose the necessary sanction of the law for indiscriminate waste disposal. We will have to enforce the law through penalties, fines and make violators subject to community work to instill discipline among our constituents,” Pamintuan said.
Bishop David, chair of the Curia Sancti Rosarii, said that “the responsibility [of protecting the environment] does not solely lie on the government, but on its citizens as well.”
The bishop recommended the “aggressive promotion” of establishing materials recovery facilities (MRF) on each of the 33 barangays of the city to help in the proper segregation of wastes.
Teofilo Del Rosario, Rotary Club of Angeles assistant governor disclosed that the civic organization currently has eight Rotary clusters which will cooperate with the Angeles City government to conduct regular tree-planting activities in their respective adopted communities and maintain the same to ensure their survival.
“Angeles City is very fortunate to have been spared from the typhoons and floods that hit recently the country.
However, we never can tell what will happen in the future, so, it is best that we come up with solutions for waste disposal,” he said.
Del Rosario added that the MOA signing will also allow them to develop appropriate and creative information materials to educate the members of their adopted community regarding climate change mitigation, risk reduction and adaptation.
For his part, Bishop Jose Briones of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and current head of the city’s Task Force One-Million Trees program vowed to supplement the partnership between the local government and the said organizations through supplying them with the seedlings to sustain the cleaning and greening the city.
He added that due to the lack of space for more tree planting, they are now working with homeowners associations within several subdivisions in the city to engage citizens to do backyard planting.
Pamintuan expressed the belief that the strength of this newly formed public-private partnership, “which thrives on the principle of cooperation, collaboration and resource-pooling, will definitely aid the city, not only in environmental protection, but in other developmental programs as well.”
