OFF-THE-AIR

In October 2003, Dagupeños were horrified and outraged at the sight of the uncollected garbage that had literally flooded the City of Dagupan.

No, the city’s garbage collectors did not go on strike then. That day, ironically, was the first day of the city government’s belated implementation of Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate on December 20, 2000 and December 12, 2000, respectively, and approved by President Arroyo on January 26, 2001.

R.A. 9003 mandates, among others, waste segregation in every household, the recycling and composting of wastes in the barangay level and the collection of residuals– wastes that cannot be recycled or composted—by the municipal or city government.

There is no doubt that the city government only had the people’s welfare in mind when it implemented RA 9003. It was in keeping with its plan of transforming Dagupan into a healthy and an environment-friendly city; a city that would ensure the protection of public health and environment.

But whether it was successful or not in preparing Dagupeños for the implementation of the new law was the subject of the heated discussions that ensued in the days that followed.

As far as the Waste Management Division (WMD) of the city government is concerned, it has done its part in preparing the people for the new garbage disposal system by conducting a series of waste segregation trainings among government employees, barangay officials, students, teachers, barangay health workers and other village-based sectors since early this year.

WMD chief Reginaldo Ubando said that in these seminars, it was made very clear to all the participants that with the implementation of the new law, the city government would only collect the residuals, which, by his estimate, was only about eight percent or 12.8 tons of the 160 tons daily total produced by the city. (Recyclables comprise 48 percent, while compostables, 44 percent.) But as it turned out, there were no residuals to collect. To date, strewn all over the city are the same mixed household garbage and commercial wastes that Ubando’s office used to gather every morning and dump at the city’s 50-year-old open and unsanitary dumpsite, which is located inside the sprawling Tondaligan Ferdinand National Park just a stone’s throw away from the waters of historic Lingayen Gulf.

There, scavengers sift through the dumps in search for recyclables, re-usables and even edibles, at the same time that flies, dogs, cats and rats feast on whatever food is left for them to forage.

On the part of barangay officials, there is still nothing to recycle or to re-use and to compost because the households did not segregate. In implementing RA 9003, the city government had to shut down the city’s dumpsite then not only because the new law already prohibits its existence but also to force barangay officials to convince their residents to segregate. But not long after, it had no choice but to reopen it.

Obviously, the preparation of Dagupeños and other stakeholders for the implementation of RA 9003 should have gone beyond waste segregation training sessions and seminars.

The city government should have at least conducted a “walk through” for its implementation to immediately spot the problems that may arise when the real program is set in place. Or, it should have piloted it in one of the city’s 31 barangay. The city government should have also formulated first a solid waste management plan, as required by RA 9003, to serve as a road map in its implementation of the new law.

It is no wonder then that at the height of the heated discussions on the problem, irate residents repeatedly questioned the waste segregation policy, saying they are too busy eking out a living to have time for it. “How much more with composting?” another one said, adding that he lives in a rented room and that he does not have even a square foot of land for his own grave when he dies.

And to make matters worse, even if recyclables had been generated, the residents would have also nowhere to take them as the city government has yet to set up material recovery facilities, which according to RA 9003, shall serve as redemption centers for recyclables in the barangay.

Finally, the city government should have known that “there is a seething gap on how to effectively change the people’s throwing-away and non-segregating behavioral pattern and the burning, dumping, and back-end practices for disposal,” as pointed out by the Solid Waste Management Association of the Philippines.

“[And] the challenge,” the group added, “is to change these to patterns of resource conservation, segregation, re-use, recycling, and composting. This shift is basically attitudinal and culture-based and such task may be realized by a confluence of efforts.” And, yes, it takes some time, too.

The city government, in its eagerness to see results, may have also simply forgotten that even Rome was not built in one day.

Last year, the city hall announced that it was ready to implement the recommendations of the University of the Philippines Center for Local and Regional Governance (UP-CLRG) for a top-to-bottom revamp of the city government to make it more efficient and effective in the delivery of services to the people of Dagupan City.

Four years ago, the UP-CLRG found in a management evaluation that the city government was totally disorganized and inadequate in responding to the needs of the people and to the demands of public service. It suggested the adoption of a lean and mean organizational structure that would clearly define each office’s functions and responsibilities and save the city from wasting millions of pesos of the people’s money every year for the salaries of employees who just sit in their offices all day and wait for the sunset.

Why the reorganization plan has not been implemented yet more than one year now after the city hall announcement is not clear to me. And no one has bothered to ask why.

While many Dagupeños welcomed the city government revamp, there were those who questioned the necessity and sincerity of the revamp. Some even saw it as mere witch-hunting – a desperate ploy to purge the city government of employees who did not support Mayor Benjamin Lim in the last two elections– more than a desire to rid the city’s bureaucracy of deadwood and non-performers. This perception was bolstered by a city official’s pronouncement that in the implementation of the UP recommendations, all city government positions will be declared vacant, in obvious defiance of the Civil Service rule on the security of tenure.

But there were others who believed that Lim was doing the right thing — only at the wrong time. As a consequence of the revamp, almost 300 emergency workers will be the first to go. These include street sweepers, garbage collectors and traffic aides. The work that they will be leaving will be offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis to excess permanent employees from the different city government offices.And in the face of the economic crisis gripping the country now, this is not the right time for anyone to lose a job.

But whatever Lim’s motives may be – political self-preservation or a sincere desire to serve – the city hall reorganization is long overdue. It certainly took him a lot of courage and political will to arrive at this decision.

Implemented properly, the revamp should be the first step in the installation of a truly professional bureaucracy in Dagupan City, where employees no longer have a false sense of security and the public is fully satisfied with the services they get.

ENDNOTES: Ryan Ravanzo, Vice Gov. Oscar Lambino’s executive assistant, left for Missouri, USA last Saturday as member of the Rotary Club’s Group Study Exchange delegation. Ryan, an active member of the Dagupan Jaycees Inc., was nominated by Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez, Rotary Club of Dagupan president. He will be touring various US cities for one month… Last Friday, Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Satur Ocampo was in town. He inducted the new set of Supreme Student Government officers of the Dagupan City High School. Before coming to Dagupan, he dropped by Bayambang for a breakfast with Mayor Leo de Vera, then he proceeded to San Carlos City to inaugurate a P1.2-million school-building that Bayan Muna funded at the Speaker Eugenio Perez Agricultural School.

QUICK QUOTE: Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it. –Margaret Thatcher

I was shocked to see on television the extent of devastation that hurricane Katrina eft in Louisiana and Mississippi. I couldn’t believe it was happening to America, which is supposed to have everything in the world to protect its people.

I was especially touched to see Americans wading in waist-deep floodwaters and waving white clothes and placards from their rooftops to ask for help.

In one instance, a young mother was helplessly clutching her five-day-old baby on a roadside until the police saw her and took them to a safer place. In another scene, a teary-eyed mother, who obviously didn’t know what to do and where to go, was hugging her sick three-year-old boy as they sat in a stairway.

Everybody was tired, confused, scared and hungry.

Elsewhere were flattened houses and debris from the massive destruction. There were people everywhere and some of them had to loot groceries just to have food. It was, as President George Bush said, the worst natural disaster in American history.

And, as it turned out, despite America’s super infrastructures, it wasn’t super enough to protect its own people. The massive flooding in New Orleans was caused by a breached levee and no sandbagging was able to stop the rampaging floodwaters from submerging the whole city.

Fortunately for them, they are in America. Unlike in a third world country, they won’t have to wait for international aid anymore to rescue and rehabilitate their people. Although it took more than 24 hours before the American people realized the extent of the damage, it didn’t take long for government officials to organize rescue and medical teams.

There were helicopters everywhere. Five hundred buses were sent to New Orleans to evacuate the homeless to neighboring Texas. Truckloads of food and water were also sent to the area. Even their battleships were mobilized. America, indeed, had everything and those of us who are in poor countries could only wish we had the same resources during natural calamities.

If at all it was any consolation to us, it was while watching Fox News that I learned that the people in New Orleans were already told to evacuate even before Katrina’s landfall. But they did not budge, just like the way many of our people here react when told to move to higher grounds.Hard-headedness, after all, is international.

As the world watches America rebuild New Orleans from its ruins, there will always be lessons to learn, especially in the areas of flood mitigation, rescue and relief operations, evacuation and rehabilitation. But, to my mind, the most important lesson has been learned – that even a super power is no match to nature’s wrath.

ENDNOTES: By the time this paper’s issue hits the newsstands, Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez shall have again assumed as acting city mayor. From what we heard, Mayor Benjamin Lim will be in India for a personal trip from Sept. 3-10… Last Thursday, Vice Mayor Fernandez and the Rotary Club of Dagupan, which he heads, conducted fogging operation in Barangay Carael upon the request of Barangay Captain Perfecto Velasquez, to destroy the breeding grounds mosquitoes, especially those cause the dreaded dengue fever. The activity also involved the City Health Office.

QUICK QUOTE: When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense. –Kahlil Gibran