Talisay SP junks councilor's proposals

CEBU, Philippines - Talisay City Minority Councilor Danny Caballero expressed his disappointment once again when the city council yesterday morning junked his three environment-related proposals, saying the majority bloc is blinded by politics.

“It’s very sad to know they failed to see the importance of these proposals. And what’s more sad about it is that they did it just to show that they have the majority,” Caballero, in an interview, said.

Caballero, who belongs to the three-member minority bloc, had three pending proposed resolutions filed last year, which were referred to the committee on Environment.

But in yesterday’s session, Councilor Bernard Odilao, being chairman on council committee on the Environment, submitted his committee reports to the council and recommended that Caballero’s proposed resolution supporting President Aquino’s Executive Order No. 23, which declares a moratorium on cutting of trees, be “vacated for being redundant with existing undertakings.”

In his report, Odilao said the city has already existing vanguards “which monitor and apprehend illegal loggers”.

He said barangay tanods in the mountain barangays of the city act as forest guards, while two job order employees have already been posted as additional guards.

But Caballero said even with Odilao’s contention, the cutting of trees especially in sitio Campinsa, barangay Manipis, has remained unabated.

He said these so-called vanguards and barangay tanods are also no match to the illegal loggers which are suspected to be armed.

“Do you think ang vanguards makaadto na sa remote areas sa Talisay?” he asked, adding that the city’s forests are balding because of the city’s lack of sustainable programs.

In an earlier interview with The Freeman, Odilao himself admitted that the city’s vanguards are only deployed as far as the area of barangay Lagtang.

He also admitted that the cutting of trees in barangay Manipis and its neighboring areas, supposedly a protected forest, is one of his headaches.

Odilao, a third-term councilor under the administration bloc, also granted the same fate to Caballero’s proposal on teaching children on proper waste segregation.

Odilao recommended that it should be rejected being “redundant.”

He siad “there is an existing curriculum incorporated by the Department of Education regarding climate change and specifically on waste segregation.”

But in a separate interview, Vince Cinches, the city’s outgoing consultant on Environment, said the city is still struggling to implement its solid waste segregation management.

Caballero said his proposal was only meant to bolster the city’s solid waste management programs.

Meanwhile, Caballero’s proposal on putting marine buoys at the Lagundi Reef met the same fate.

Odilao said “new buoys and markers are already in place in the Lagundi Reef area.”

In an interview with Odilao a few days ago, he, however, admitted that Bong Nator, which was commissioned by the city to oversee the Lagundi Reef in barangay Poblacion, has yet to submit to his office a canvass report on the pricing of marine buoys.

In that same interview, Odilao said he blamed Nator for the delay of putting the buoys, which are intended to protect the marine sanctuary from illegal fishermen.

For his part, Caballero said since the majority bloc had shown to him its power, then there’s nothing he could do about it.

“Wa na gyud tay mahimo kay majority man sila,” he said. — (FREEMAN)