Volunteers clean Bacolod's thoroughfares

Monday, February 6, 2012

THE Bacolod City Task Force Clean and Green, chaired by Mayor Evelio R. Leonardia, started the cleanup drive last Saturday at the main thoroughfares of the city.

The activity was participated by City Government employees, civic organizations, private individuals and other concerned citizens.

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It started from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. covering the whole Lacson-Mandalagan strip from North Terminal to Magsaysay Avenue, including Lopez Jaena, Locsin and Aguinaldo.

Saturday's activity was the first of the four Saturdays which the task force had scheduled the cleanup from February 4, 2012.

PAMPANGA. CSF PESO Manager Donny Sayre shows a plaque of recognition awarded to his office for being adjudged best employment office in the component city category during Monday's SRS launch. (Jovi T. De Leon)

Leonardia said this activity launches the clean and green campaign where they have solicited the participation of the different sectors.

To a certain extent, it was a surprise that not only the casual employees have volunteered to join but also the regular employees of the city. The police also came in full force. I understand the teachers are also somewhere else. The civic clubs, the Bacolod City College were in the streets to help clean the city, he said.

He added that the immediate target of the campaign was to spread awareness and consciousness to our people.

He said that one of the highlights of his first administration in 1995 was the city's winning of the cleanest and greenest city in the country and it came at a time when the city was already normalizing garbage collection.

He said that if the privatization can also be implemented, it could accelerate things.

This is a very good start. This will run for four weekends and by that time, we have already saturated the program and it is just a question of follow-up, he said.

We started the information education campaign in the barangays and schools to teach everyone about segregation. We promote zero waste. This would mean that at source (household), those recyclable materials like empty bottles, sachets, cans, old newspapers, among others. As an incentive to her house helpers, they are the ones selling it and they can have extra income. Those that are compostable, we compose it, Councilor Em Ang said.

We are calling on the non-government organizations to help us out like the garden club, orchid society, cause-oriented groups and civic organizations to adopt certain areas for beautification, he added.

She asked the people to start cleaning you own backyard, let's segregate at home and help clean your immediate surroundings and then if we can expand to the bigger community outside of your homes which is the barangays and help spread the word to be clean, it could really help a lot.

Let us not hesitate to call the attention of our neighbors if they do illegal dumping of garbage by gently reminding them that it is against the law and it is grossly immoral to do it. I hope that all Bacolodnons will support this program and see dramatic results in shortest time possible. Let us be driven by the line that, I'm Bacolodnon and I'm proud to be clean and green, she said.

Vice Mayor Sayson said this is just a start in the clean and green program and hopefully, this will rub off to the employees and citizens of Bacolod, in general.

The task force is chaired by Vice Mayor Jude Thaddeus Sayson, with overall chairman Sylvia Servando and Councilors Em Ang, Sonya Verdeflor and Mona Dia Jardin as cluster chairpersons.