WITH the onset of rainy season, Cebu City’s Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) has received more requests for to declog drainage outlets and fix roads.
As this developed, DEPW urged barangays to help prevent people from throwing garbage into rivers and other waterways, which causes floods.
In an interview, Engr. Nilo Igot, assistant city engineer, said that in a day, their office receives at least 30 requests for declogging and road maintenance.
Efforts to clean up clogged waterways are sustained but of the number of requests they get daily, they can only attend to five areas a day because of the amounts of garbage their teams need to clean.
“We clean those clogged canals, drainage and other waterways all year round because that’s a continuing activity under our office. We set aside a budget for it,” he said.
But if the public lacks discipline in disposing of their waste properly, Igot said that waterways in the city will continue to be clogged, which is why some city streets are usually flooded during heavy rains.
“For instance, we declogged a manhole on Colon St., and the plastics that we collected was enough to fill a truck. This is the reason flooding is usually reported in the Colon and Manalili areas,” he said.
Last week, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration declared the start of the rainy season.
Aside from Colon and Manalili, Igot said, Carbon Public Market remains a concern to the DEPW because some vendors directly throw their wastes into the drainage lines.
For this year, DEPW has a budget of P3.5 million for declogging and P1 million for road maintenance. Barangays, he said, can always tap DEPW to help in cleaning the drainage and waterways in their areas.
Mayor Tomas Osmeña has said he wants to ban the use of plastic bags every day instead of just on Wednesdays and Saturdays as specified in City Ordinance 2343. (RVC)