‘Segregate wastes or get sued’
The Solid Waste Management board of the Mandaue City government warned officials of at least 18 barangays of the city to implement the solid waste management strategies or get sued.
Rowena Alinsonorin, executive director of Integrated Development of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (Rafi), said 70 percent of the 27 barangays in the city or at least 18 barangays failed to comply with the Solid Waste Management Act.
Rafi, which is the technical secretariat of the Solid Waste Management Board of Mandaue City, evaluates the performance of the barangay officials.
She said that lawyer Benjamin Cabrido, Solid Waste board’s consultant, had asked Mayor Jonas Cortes to start the process of filing a case against the erring officials on their failure to implement the solid waste management practices in their barangays.
Alinsonorin said that Cabrido would first send notices to sue to the officials to give them another chance to implement the solid waste strategies.
The violations include barangays having no materials recovery facility (MRF). Last month, the board said that there were only at least four barangays with functioning MRFs. These are barangays Canduman, Pagsabungan, Ibabao and Bakilid.
Engineer Ricardo Mendoza of the solid waste management board earlier said that the the barangays with no MRFs were still looking for a lot to build their facility.
Despite this problem, Alinsonorin said that the board would also continue to conduct orientations and workshops to the barangay officials until they would adopt the different solid waste strategies.
“Last month we even went on a tour to Camotes Island together with the barangay officials to learn about how the barangay officials there managed waste disposal. We can’t say that a city can’t learn from a municipality,” she said.
She said that households should continue to segregate their wastes and recycle recyclables to reduce the residual waste for dumping and the barangays should be the lead enforcement body of this system. /Correspondent Norman V. Mendoza
