Labella calls on barangays to help in the ‘massive’ river cleanup

The Cebu City government is embarking on a massive river cleanup of the city’s waterways starting August. This would include the Lahug River, which is seen in this 2018 photo. | CDN Digital file photo

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella has called the barangays in the city to help in the “massive” river clean-up that the city government aims to conduct starting August.

In the meeting with the 80 barangay chiefs of Cebu City, Labella reminded them that the riverways being clogged with garbage would be a problem of not just the downtown barangays, but all of the barangays.

Clogged waterways will eventually result to flooding, which has been one of the major problems in the city that Labella has promised in his inaugural speech to tackle as mayor.

“The first we will tackle will be the Guadalupe River. We examined, we went around, and we found out that it has the most serious problems,” said Labella.

Read more: Labella orders massive dredging or rivers, waterways

Labella said the meeting with the barangay chiefs was only the first step in the rehabilitation of the waterways as a “massive dredging” would soon be conducted to declog and deepen the city’s rivers.

The biggest cause of the clogging of the waterways is garbage, something that the city has continuously addressed through cleanups over the years.

Association of Barangay Captains (ABC) President, Franklyn Ong, said that the barangays have been helping in the collection of garbage as each barangay has at least one garbage truck.

He said the barangays had been responsible in collecting garbage as much as they could and many downtown barangays with bigger population had employed the services of private haulers to collect garbage from their areas as well.

However, for the barangay still need the help of the city in the collection because the garbage is often too much to collect by the barangays alone.

Ong said that the city was usually the ones collecting garbage in the main thoroughfares, which lifted the burden from the barangays to collect them.

Read more: Cebu Cenro requests dredging equipment from DPWH for river cleanup

For now, Ong said the barangays would have no choice but to help out as much as they could because the mayor had requested the help of each barangay in the collection.

“Nagdouble time gyod atong mga barangays sa pagkolekta karon. (The barangays are doubling their time in the garbage collection),” said Ong.

Ong also said that the barangays should help in the cleanup not just those in the downtown end of the rivers but starting from the source in the mountain barangays.

He said the garbage would flow downstream and would cause accumulated trash in the lower portions of the river clogging the waterways.

The ABC president encouraged the barangay chiefs to give a hand in the cleanup as every effort done from each part of the streams would have a huge impact to the overall rehabilitation of the rivers. /dbs