THE Anti-Smoke Belching Unit (Asbu) of the Davao City Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro) targets to establish units in all district of Davao City by next year.
As they have very limited reach of the entire city in terms of monitoring, Cenro Pollution and Industrial Waste Management engineer Bong Rebamonte believes that establishment of Asbu in the three districts of the city will improve the capacities of the unit most especially in dealing with smoke-belching vehicles.
He added Asbu is currently a single centralized unit in Davao City which makes it difficult for them to go out and check complaints of concerned citizens about smoke-belching vehicles on the northern and southern parts of the city all at the same time.
Currently, Asbu is a 15-man team where 10 of them are usually deployed out in the streets to monitor and flag down smoke-belching vehicles. Two of them are deployed at the Cenro main office and the remaining three at Cenro Ma-a.
"It is really difficult for us to monitor vehicles with the limited manpower," said Rebamonte adding they plan to hold 10 personnel per district for the ASBU establishments in the city. All 30 of them are going to be deployed in the field.
He also said from January to November 20 of this year, their division had apprehended 2,357 smoke-belching vehicles although some of them weren't able to come back for additional compliance as they are from other parts of Mindanao and just happened to pass through the city.
Rebamonte hopes that with the establishment of the 3 additional ASBU in the city, monitoring will be strengthened to help lessen air pollution in the city.