ANGELES CITY – A man’s word is his honor.
With that in the mind of Joyce Tamayo, secretary general and spokesperson of the Krusada Kontra Amoy (KKK), said she trusted the promise of the Sangunniang Bayan (SB) of Porac that they would pass a resolution ending the existence of foul-emitting piggeries in Barangays Sta. Cruz and Manibaug Paralaya.
Tamayo said her group’s plan to lead a protest rally some months back was put on hold as a gesture of goodwill to the SB members. The KKK, Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement (PGKM), Damayan and other groups planned to stage a protest rally in Sta. Cruz and areas near the municipal hall.
“The SB members asked us to defer the rally and promised that they would pass a resolution calling for the relocation of piggeries within the time frame we wanted,” said Tamayo in the dialect. She stressed that the piggeries “should be relocated within six months to one year.”
“It never came. Worse, we received a report that the SB had not even tackled the piggeries issue in their previous sessions,” she added. “We have given them enough time. Now, we have no choice but to go on with the rally.”
Tamayo at the same time said her group had already started “preparing dossiers” of the town councilors and other elected leaders for use in the 2010 elections.
“We are going to come out with a rogues’ gallery of all the councilors and officials who failed in bringing a definitive solution to the pollution caused by the piggeries. We will actively campaign against them and even hound them in their meetings. They have no right to be elected inasmuch as they did not have the heart to serve their constituencies,” Tamayo said.
Tamayo was named as member of the Task Force Clean Air by Mayor Roger Santos. The task force was tasked to decide on the fate of the piggeries.
But Tamayo said she had quit the task force even before their first meeting.
She said Santos and his representative, Rogie Pangilinan, “could not tell him straight what was the real intentions and agenda of the task force.”
“I told them the KKK will only join the task force if it will be agreed upon that the piggeries will be out by next year at the most,” Tamayo said. “We don’t want to go back to the old days when we were counting pigs and checking on their farms as part of the job of the task force then.”
She was referring to a similar task force created some five years ago that even included representatives of the bureaus under the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources which, she said, “came to nothing even remotely close to solving the stink from the piggeries.”
Tamayo said Santos and the SB had made “a simple problem very complicated.”
“The piggeries have been the scourge the residents not just in Porac but in nearby cities and towns for many years. So they should be out for the sake of the welfare of the people as soon as possible,” she said. “That they are still here with their obnoxious, dreadful and dangerous stench, is a testament to the utter lack of political will of the local government leaders.”
Pangilinan called up the editor of this paper on Wednesday and said they will issue a statement on Sept 12.
In a related development, PGKM Chairman Ruperto “Perto” Cruz disclosed that a certain Elmer Gundran is not a member of the PGKM.
Gundran was named as member of Task Force Clean Air as representative of the PGKM.
“There is a process in accepting members of the PGKM. It is long and tedious because we want to make sure our members are totally committed to the vision and mission of our organization,” Cruz said.
