Clueless in Bacolod

SOMETHING SMELLS

Negros Daily Bulletin

By Alan S. Gensoli

Last Friday, April 3, while I was losing 650 calories per hour at the Riverside Gym, I watched on their plasma-TV the week’s episode of “Joe Lib Live.” Riverside, by the way, is a member of the Bacolod Anti-Baha Alliance and has won several national awards for its Solid Waste Management (SWM) program. So, I’m proud to say I gym there. 

Back to “Joe Lib Live:” The show featured an audio recording of an interview of Brgy. Felisa Kagawad Ma. Fe Tresfuentes. The interview was in fact conducted two days earlier, on April 1, which was the start of the city’s “No Segregation, No Collection” policy. In the interview, Kagawad Tresfuentes said that the Alyansa Kontra Basura (ALKOBA) had formed a monitoring team to check if indeed the garbage trucks of the city were delivering residual and special wastes only to the open dump in Felisa, and only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, as City Hall had directed. 

In hindsight, I think the city’s “No Segregation, No Collection” policy may have started on the wrong foot. You see, while the Bacolod LGU said that it will pick up residual and special wastes on T-Th-S, it chose April 1 to launch its policy. And April 1 is a Wednesday. You will agree that if there are mistakes to catch in implementing a policy, the best time to catch them is on the first day of implementation, when the process is undergoing test. Sure enough, Kagawad Tresfuentes later informed me that on April 1 the ALKOBA monitoring team turned back around six garbage trucks because these contained unsegregated garbage. And even if they were delivering residual and special wastes, April 1 was a Wednesday. The garbage trucks were not supposed to be there on a Wednesday! Sus, my gulay! Had the Bacolod LGU told PGMA, she would have moved April 1 to a Tuesday! Or a Thursday! Even a Saturday! Kaya nga i-move ang Araw ng Kagitingan ‘yun pa kaya ang Araw ng mga Ulol? 

I have no space to tell you about all the six trucks that were turned back, but two will fit just fine in this column. According to 

Kagawad Tresfuentes, one of the trucks was delivering unsegregated garbage from Brgy. Estefania. This is distressing because of all barangays to be caught disobeying the orders of City Hall, it had to be the barangay of the ABC President, whose election to the ABC Presidency (automatically making him city councilor), I am told, had the blessings of the Mayor! Hello?! 

The chances of Brgy. Estafania getting caught making this mistake, out of the total 61 barangays of Bacolod, is as remote as Miss Philippines winning Miss Universe! It’s not an easy mistake to commit, but you see, if you’re not careful, you can easily make a mistake when you shouldn’t be making it because you’re the leader, the shining example, the ABC President. And, if you’re really, really not careful, your mistake could end up on TV being re-run all week long. Kagawad Tresfuentes also told me that the truck driver admitted that he didn’t know about the city’s “No Segregation, No Collection” policy. Well, whose fault is that now? 

It gets hairy. Kagawad Tresfuentes also shared that a representative of the City Environment Office (CENRO), who was also at Felisa when the ALKOBA team was monitoring, turned back a garbage truck delivering hospital waste. The kagawad said, the blood on the needle connected to the dextrose bottle even looked fresh! The CENRO representative wrote down the name of the hospital, and we hope that said hospital has been informed and will not do it again. As with the first, the driver of this truck confessed he also didn’t know about the “No Segregation, No Collection” policy. 

May we know from CENRO the name of the hospital, please? Obviously, it was not Riverside. Whatever hospital it was, we should boycott that hospital. And it’s only fair that the hospital is named because it holds all hospitals suspect, when in fact other hospitals have won national awards for their SWM programs. While special waste includes household hazardous waste, hospital waste, which is hazardous, hardly qualifies as household. So please, let us not in conscience pass it off as household. That’s premeditated mortal sin. 

As late as the evening of March 30, at the monthly General Membership Meeting of the Bacolod Anti-Baha Alliance, so many of our members revealed that they, too, didn’t know about the “No Segregation, No Collection” policy of the city. And by then we were less than 36 hours to April 1, the launch date of the policy. Those who didn’t know instinctively blamed their barangay captains. I was one of those who almost didn’t know. 

I do not live in Brgy. Vista Alegre, but it was from the barangay captain of Vista Alegre-my cousin Tonette Gensoli-that I learned about the city government’s “No Segregation, No Collection” policy. If not for Brgy. Capt. Tonette, I wouldn’t have a clue even to this day. And it is for this reason that I keep on telling people that they should call their barangay captains because many barangay captains did not bother to inform their residents. 

I know for a fact that my cousin roamed the streets of Vista Alegre, holding “pulong-pulongs” from one subdivision to the next. I am not shy to lift my cousin’s chair, as it were, because he has done the right thing. In fact, I would be unfaithful to my love for Bacolod if I didn’t talk about it, because Vista Alegre happens to own the largest land area of all 61 barangays in Bacolod City. 

And so, if Brgy. Capt. Tonette Gensoli can hit the ground and inform residents house to house, there should be no reason why any other barangay captain cannot do the same, with less land area to cover. None of the 60 other barangay captains can now say they didn’t have enough time to go around and tell their people. You want to argue from the point of view of population density? Don’t bother, nowhere is it more dense than in Abada-Escay, the newest purok of Vista Alegre. So hush. 

Frankly, I do not expect barangay captains to perform miracles, as much as I might expect Mayor Bing Leonardia and Councilor Greg Gasataya to perform miracles, because they have the wherewithal to produce them. But if I don’t know that my barangay captain doesn’t have the funds to implement environmental policies, I will end up blaming him anyway, when in fact I should blame City Hall for two reasons. First, R.A. 9003 (Ecological Solid Waste Management Act) says City Hall must help the barangay financially if the barangay cannot afford to implement our environmental laws, policies, and programs. And second, R.A. 7160 (New Government Code) says that the city government is primarily responsible for implementing laws, including R.A. 9003. 

We the people cannot be held clueless about the “No Segregation, No Collection” policy, especially since our non-compliance is subject to penalty, with fines and imprisonment. Unless barangay captains talk to us and convince us how their barangays’ non-compliance to the policy is not their fault, we will instinctively blame them for any problem, any hindrance to the successful implementation of the policy-and that includes our ignorance of it because they didn’t tell us about it. Believe me, Caps, if we can blame you for our laziness to segregate our garbage at home, I’m sure we will do that, too. Pity our barangay captains, but in the pecking order of things, they are found naturally standing at the crossfire, and so they could get picked on and pecked at with abandon. We need them to speak up and speak out-speak out about what support they need from City Hall, speak up about what support they need from the people. Then, I’ll be more than happy to take up their cause every Monday.*