While most people perceive the garbage problem as the sole responsibility of the city government, City Mayor Dan Lim gingerly shrugs people to reality by showing them a waste treatment facility is not the end all and be all to all problems here.
The mayor’s stand goes well with the national government’s programs on informing people about the wide-ranging impacts of the phenomenon and how their action can influence the pace of climate change.
The city government’s critics have recently feasted on the touchy issue pointing to the failure of the waste to put up on time the promised waste treatment facility in Taloto.
While doing this, most critics follow through with the continued use of the now supposed to be closed Dampas garbage dump by the enactment of a national law on the ecological solid waste management.
Now pitted in a serious “damn if you do and damn if you don’t situation,†Mayor Lim said “the environmental problem caused by the absence of a waste treatment facility is a minor one.
This he said as he compares the problem to “the slow but inevitable problem caused by the global warming phenomenon.â€
Speaking to address city residents gathered at the City Hall Atrium during the 43rd anniversary of the city charter, Lim who sees the garbage problem not just as a tree but the whole forest however did not have to elaborate to be sounding self-righteous and accusatory.
Giving to the city people enough to think about, his pitch on the global warming phenomenon did touch on the real problem of simply dumping trash.
While the city government has a fairly efficient garbage collection system going, a causal look at the type of waste for disposal would reveal largely unsegregated waste lumped into garbage bags, all doomed to the dumps.
Over this, Provincial Environment Officer Nestor Canda, in radio interviews earlier bared the need for the people to practice segregation at source to keep the usable and recyclable waste from filling the dumps just as easily.
In his message too, Mayor Lim said “the garbage disposal problem aggravated by the irresponsible dumping of trash on the shorelines by illegal settlers is dwarfed by the projected rising of the seawaters to a level that would threaten not only the temporary shelters but of the very lives of the residents themselves, he said.
City residents, especially those on the coastal areas have seen enough of the rising level of seawaters recently, phenomenon that became just as alarming with the annual extraordinary high tides in June.
Even then, the mayor did not turn his back on the responsibility when he admitted “we still have to iron out the problems related to our solid waste facility.â€
He topped all these by saying “some of the concerns that we face today need immediate response. The others can wait but they entail bigger, more complicated and more expensive solutions from the city in the future.†(PIA)
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