There the garbage is segregated – the plastic wares, bottles, styrofoam and other recyclables put in sacks and bags, to be sold to junk shops, and the bio-degradables buried right at the park.
Reports said three garbage collectors “refused to be identified and would not say who authorized them” to do their dumping and burying at the park.
But with the segregation and burial sites just about 20 meters from the encampment of the still-protesting quarrymen of the Biyaya a Luluguran at Sisikapan (Balas), it would take but a little tinge of malice to conjure whose hand it was that pushed for this dirty job.
This may yet be another move – an obnoxious one, literally more than figuratively – to drive the Balas boys out of their picketline by you know who.
Who? Those that have been sore at all those streamers and posters strung around the park, that’s who, dummy.
In fairness, naman, it could be that burying the degradable at the park is but a part of the current renovation project being undertaken there. That is part of fertilizing the ground preparatory to landscaping. O, di ba?
The garbage “undertakers” are doing their share of beautifying the capitol grounds while at the same time earn something for the family from the scraps of recyclables that they sell to junk shops. What a splendid way to exercise waste management and enlist in the anti-poverty campaign pa.
Ah, this should be made a compulsory program of every local government unit for its sheer environmental and livelihood impact.
As one Alain David, identified as “a staff member of the barangay council”, was wuoted in the reports as saying: “Okay naman pu siguro iyan. Ing kukutkut da naman ing mabubuluk at malalaso. Manakitan la pa rugu keng plastic at bakal a akukuwa da. Anti pu reng plastic bag a reta a sapak na, pera la naman pung makasaup den.” (I think what they are doing is okay. What they bury there anyway decompose. They even earn a little more from the plastic and scrap metal that they segregate. Those junk-filled plastic bags are money that would help them).
So, okay lang?
Not so fast there. The garbage segregation and burial sites are but 10 meters away from the monument to the martyred Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, and well within the smelling distance of the other monuments to Kapampangan heroes there – from the equestrian statue of the Revolutionary General Maximino Hizon, to the martyred jurist Jose Abad Santos, and the beloved President Diosdado P.Macapagal.
For all intent and purposes, Macario Arnedo Park is hallowed ground. It is a place of honor and reverence. Garbage of any kind there is clear desecration. As any garbage – plastic or human – at the capitol.
