FOR ALL its national and international awards in the field of governance, the city government of San Fernando has much to learn from the small municipality of Apalit.
That is where waste management is concerned.
While City Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez was obstinate in his denial of the city dumpsite in Barangay Lara even after the Environment Management Bureau served its notice of closure, Apalit Mayor Oscar Tetangco, Jr. had long closed the town’s dumpsite located at the boundary with Calumpit, Bulacan. It was the EMB itself that Mayor Jun requested to “properly close” the dumpsite.
For at least a week now, garbage in St. Jude Village, San Agustin where I currently stay – along with the other barangays, I presume – has not been collected.
Barangay workers were telling the village folk that due to the closure of the Lara dumpsite, the city had nowhere to throw its garage in. At Sunday’s Mass, Rev. Fr. Raul de los Santos read an appeal from the homeowners’ association leadership for the villagers to minimize their garbage, practice segregation and just bury biodegradable wastes in their yards as the city government had indeed stopped collecting garbage.
Nowhere for San Fernando to dump its garbage?
There’s the Kalangitan sanitary landfill that is less than an hour away. If Angeles City with an outstanding balance of over P64 million, can resume dumping its garbage there, why can’t the debtless and financially empowered City of San Fernando?
Indeed, Kalangitan is servicing Apalit too. That, environmentalist Sonny Dobles of the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon confirmed.
If a town executive exercised his mind more often than his mouth, there is absolutely no reason for garbage to remain uncollected and undumped in sanitary way. This Mayor Jun has exampled.
In Apalit, all 12 barangays have been impacted with the spirit and provisions of Republic Act 9003 causing them to put up their respective materials recovery facilities (MRF).
“I specifically discouraged the clustering of MRFs among contingent barangays,” Mayor Jun says. “Basura ng barangay mo, sagot mo. That will inhere direct responsibility in the individual barangay leaders.”
As incentive, the local government offered P500,000 worth of projects – prioritized as to individual barangay needs – to every village chair “ably” implementing waste management in his area of responsibility.
“The incentive has induced our barangay leaders to tap folk ingenuity,” Mayor Jun says with pride. “We have proven here that it does not cost that much to put up a barangay MRF, what with cheap building materials readily available.”
To prove his point, the mayor took a number of mediamen last week to two barangays: Sucad, which MRF is built of bamboo; and Cansinala, where an old unused bodega in the compound of village chair Inaki Saenz now serves as MRF.
Good waste management practices are very evident in the two barangays.
Along the main road In Sucad are metal “cages” placed at every 50-meter interval where plastic containers and bottles are dropped. The barangay collects these recyclables and sells them to junkshops.
“The proceeds from these are what we use to pay for the maintenance of our streetlights, including the power bills,” Sucad chair Hermogenes Bayani, Jr. told us.
In Cansinala, the biodegradable waste is not simply composted but is raw material in an “organic fertilizer production project” undertaken by the municipal agriculture office, with African worms as “processors.”
“The way things are now, we have effectively reduced our waste problem to 30 percent. And that, we take to the Kalangitan landfill,” Mayor Jun says.
Some learning curve there that will be of help to other local government executives.
That is where waste management is concerned.
While City Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez was obstinate in his denial of the city dumpsite in Barangay Lara even after the Environment Management Bureau served its notice of closure, Apalit Mayor Oscar Tetangco, Jr. had long closed the town’s dumpsite located at the boundary with Calumpit, Bulacan. It was the EMB itself that Mayor Jun requested to “properly close” the dumpsite.
For at least a week now, garbage in St. Jude Village, San Agustin where I currently stay – along with the other barangays, I presume – has not been collected.
Barangay workers were telling the village folk that due to the closure of the Lara dumpsite, the city had nowhere to throw its garage in. At Sunday’s Mass, Rev. Fr. Raul de los Santos read an appeal from the homeowners’ association leadership for the villagers to minimize their garbage, practice segregation and just bury biodegradable wastes in their yards as the city government had indeed stopped collecting garbage.
Nowhere for San Fernando to dump its garbage?
There’s the Kalangitan sanitary landfill that is less than an hour away. If Angeles City with an outstanding balance of over P64 million, can resume dumping its garbage there, why can’t the debtless and financially empowered City of San Fernando?
Indeed, Kalangitan is servicing Apalit too. That, environmentalist Sonny Dobles of the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon confirmed.
If a town executive exercised his mind more often than his mouth, there is absolutely no reason for garbage to remain uncollected and undumped in sanitary way. This Mayor Jun has exampled.
In Apalit, all 12 barangays have been impacted with the spirit and provisions of Republic Act 9003 causing them to put up their respective materials recovery facilities (MRF).
“I specifically discouraged the clustering of MRFs among contingent barangays,” Mayor Jun says. “Basura ng barangay mo, sagot mo. That will inhere direct responsibility in the individual barangay leaders.”
As incentive, the local government offered P500,000 worth of projects – prioritized as to individual barangay needs – to every village chair “ably” implementing waste management in his area of responsibility.
“The incentive has induced our barangay leaders to tap folk ingenuity,” Mayor Jun says with pride. “We have proven here that it does not cost that much to put up a barangay MRF, what with cheap building materials readily available.”
To prove his point, the mayor took a number of mediamen last week to two barangays: Sucad, which MRF is built of bamboo; and Cansinala, where an old unused bodega in the compound of village chair Inaki Saenz now serves as MRF.
Good waste management practices are very evident in the two barangays.
Along the main road In Sucad are metal “cages” placed at every 50-meter interval where plastic containers and bottles are dropped. The barangay collects these recyclables and sells them to junkshops.
“The proceeds from these are what we use to pay for the maintenance of our streetlights, including the power bills,” Sucad chair Hermogenes Bayani, Jr. told us.
In Cansinala, the biodegradable waste is not simply composted but is raw material in an “organic fertilizer production project” undertaken by the municipal agriculture office, with African worms as “processors.”
“The way things are now, we have effectively reduced our waste problem to 30 percent. And that, we take to the Kalangitan landfill,” Mayor Jun says.
Some learning curve there that will be of help to other local government executives.
