Anti-Baha Alliance: There's more to get done!

The Anti-Baha Alliance did an ocular visit Friday to various sites where the city has started its clearing, cleaning and dredging operations. 

They visited Purok Riverside's Zones 1, 2 and 3, Purok Mahimulaton temporary relocation center, the Kimara relocation site and at Purok Mahimulaton where Sipalay's Water Master did the dredging operation. 

Jean Trebol and her group went on every creek and pointed the portions where the city has left some work unattended. 

Trebol said the city is doing what it has promised, however, there is more to get done right and properly. 

She pointed the pile of garbage and a huge cut of wood in the middle of a river at the back of several houses in Zone 2, Purok Riverside. 

The flow of water is very slow and the color of the water is almost black which means it lacks oxygen. 

Garbage spreads everywhere and the siltation has almost eaten half of the river, Trebol said. 

The city's team has not finished some portions of what they have cleared and dredged, but they transfer from one place to another which is supposedly, they have to start clearing, cleaning and dredging from upstream particularly in the creeks in Barangay Bata and downstream in Banago, she said. 

"I am not an Engineer. But common sense will tell us that there's more to get done before they transfer to another place. There is no question that they are working. But what we want is for them to work right and properly," she said. 

The group went to Purok Mahimulaton to see the progress of the work done with the use of a rented water master. 

The Water Master operator continues to dredge but then there is no solution yet on how to haul out a mountainous pile of sand. 

Some squatters there have not yet vacated the place because according to them, they have not yet received financial assistance from the city. 

Trebol said her group would do everything to solve the flooding problem. 

"There is nothing political here. This is a legitimate cause that needs political will," she said. 

The group meantime plans to do an educational campaign on proper garbage disposal because garbage is really a problem in Bacolod. 

They wrote the Department of Public Services (DPS) regarding their operation as how many dump trucks are operating, how many tons of garbage are collected everyday and several questions which can be used as baseline to approach the problem intelligently. 

DPS has not answered us. There is no malice when we asked questions like that because we want to know where we can start helping solve the problem, she said. 

The Anti-Baha Alliance was formed when the flooding problem in Sta. Clara and Villa Valderama subdivisions in Mandalagan was on its worst form. 

Sta. Clara is a high end subdivision, but the residents there seems to be living in a pool when it rains because flood waters enter their homes, affecting their day to day chores. 

The city has been slow in addressing the problem until the Alliance made the longest caravan in time of the Western Visayas Tourism Assembly last November. 

They went to the City Council to submit their manifesto, asking the city officials to get down to work now that they are seated in power. 

"It's time that you work for us because we form part of the reasons why you are all here in the City Government. No more promises. Just show us that you are working on this problem," Agnes Jalandoni, their spokesperson said it before. (EASD)