HEY, if you don’t wan’t to live in Metro Cebu, you’re more than welcome to leave. Otherwise, stop treating it like it was your own personal dumpsite.
How else do you explain what happened last Sunday, June 23, 2019, in Mandaue City?
An afternoon downpour caused the water level at the Mahiga Creek, which serves as the boundary between the cities of Mandaue and Cebu, to go up.
Piles of floating garbage composed mostly of plastic containers and bottles started flowing downstream only to get stuck under the Subangdaku bridge on Lopez Jeana St.
Obviously, as the water rose, the garbage had nowhere else to go but out into the streets.
The scene at that stretch of highway became surreal.
Pedestrians huddled on the water’s edge, awaiting rescue. Motorists were directed to a detour, while some drivers decided to wait for the flood to subside rather than risk getting stuck in the middle of the impromptu pond.
And so, instead of four-wheeled and two-wheeled vehicles plying the usually busy thoroughfare, all forms of floating garbage that bobbed up and down were in their stead, going where the current took them.
Although the rainfall only lasted less than an hour, the water was almost knee-deep in some areas, according to Jay Basubas of the Mandaue City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office.
Basubas said their office was forced to deploy government vehicles to pick up stragglers.
They also recruited personnel of the General Services Office and the clean and green unit of the barangay to help gather the floating garbage.
There’s no doubt something needs to be done to prevent a repeat of this incident. The narrow and shallow waterway must be deepened so it won’t easily overflow when it rains, for one.
But even if this rehabilitation program is implemented, if the people who live along its bank or near it continue to use the creek as their personal landfill, the problem will never go away, said Nida Cabrera, head of the Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office.
“We have already implemented various cleanup drives in Mahiga Creek. However, residents there would just not cooperate,” Cabrera lamented.
As she pointed out, uncollected garbage in the cities of Mandaue and Cebu that gets carried away by rainwater usually ends up in the Mahiga Creek, which flows out to the sea at the North Reclamation Area.
But it’s unfair to single out residents in the area, most of whom, and I’m assuming this, are poor. After all, majority of last Sunday’s floating garbage didn’t look like these came from poor households.
You know what I mean?