This was confidently declared by Mayor Antonio “TJ” C. Rodriguez, Jr. over the weekend even as he vowed to go after, hammer- and-thong, against the parties involved in the dumping of Canadian garbage in one of its barangays in violation of local ordinances and international accord like the Basel Convention, the international agreement governing waste disposal.
Rodriguez said Capas is already categorized as partly an urban municipality with a population of 130,000 and annual revenue of over P60 million as of June this year.
By 2019, the town that sits on a land area of 376.39 hectares is forecast to have more than 200,000 population and internally-generated revenues of P100 million and, thus, fully qualified for cityhood, Rodriguez said in last Friday’s media forum “Balitaan,” organized by the Capampangan in Media, Inc. (CAMI) in cooperation with the Clark Development Corp. (CDC).
Tarlac, a landlocked province in Central Luzon, is host to a city, Tarlac City, which also serves as the provincial capital, and 17 municipalities with 511 barangays.
The province is divided into three congressional districts.
Records show that Capas’s annual budget this year stood at P278,069,878, or P121,789,004 higher than its P156,280,874 budget in 2009, the year before Rodriguez took over as mayor.
Its IRA also posted an P82,149,829 increase at P214,359,177 for this year from the previous P132,209,348 in 2009.
Revenues generated by the town this year reached P63,710,701 or P39,369,175 higher than the previous level of P24,071,526.
The second-term mayor attributed the rise in the town’s internal revenues to the following:
the entry of fresh private investments and increase in real property tax (RPT) collection.
During the years 2010 to 2015, some 1,293 new business establishments were registered in Capas, boosting business permit collections by P35,419,537 as compared from the previous five-year period of 2005 to 2009.
The town’s RPT collections from 2011 to 2014 also jumped from P5,503,862 to P15,623,164 from the P10,119,302 tax-take in the period 2007 -2010.
Capas also generates an average of P5 million annual revenues from tourism-oriented activities and businesses in Barangay Sta. Juliana, a popular a jumpoff point for tourists visiting the crater of Mt. Pinatubo, which erupted in 1991.
A two percent gross income earned (GIE) is also derived from the revenues of the Metro Clark Waste Management Corp., (MCWMC) where Capas is host to its sanitary landfill in Barangay Kalangitan which is now embroiled in an on-going controversy following the “surreptitious and illegal” dumping of garbage imported from Canada contained in some 29 40-foot container vans. Rodriguez said he has ordered the return of eight 40-foot container vans containing Canadian garbage that are still in the barangay after they were prevented from dumping its content at the sanitary landfill.
Rodriquez said under the MCWMC contract, only domestic trash originating from the provinces of Tarlac and Pampanga, Baguio City and some parts of Metro Manila are allowed to be dumped in Barangay Kalangitan.
“We in Capas and the whole of Tarlac were surprised to learn that MCWMC was dumping the Canadian trash in the Kalangitan landfill in violation of the terms of its contract with the Tarlac provincial government,” Rodriguez said.
Is the Canadian trash in question in toxic? “No one is sure,” Rodriguez said, “because the experts of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources have been giving conflicting answers and assessments.”
Still, the mayor said he fully supports the move of the Tarlac Sangguniang Panlalawigan to impose sanctions on MCWMC for the violation of the terms of its contract.
The sanctions may come in the form of heavy penalties or the suspension of that contract, Rodriguez said.
