Rama to oversee coastal cleanup, fancies baywalk

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu City Acting Mayor Michael Rama will personally supervise the 16th coastal and river cleanup in the city’s urban barangays.

Some barangay officials in Cebu City attended Rama’s press conference at the City Hall yesterday where they were also told to enforce the laws and ordinances providing for clean and healthy surroundings.

“Wala g’yoy undangay. Himoon nato ang pagpanglimpyo sa kabaybayonan para sa atong mga anak sa umaabot nga katuigan,” Rama told the barangay executives.

Aside from the barangay officials and employees, some other volunteers such as students of various universities have pledged to join the cleanup that will formally start at 7 a.m. today.

The cleanup will start with a simple program to be attended by the members of the Coastal Management Board at the Pasil Fish Port.

Councilor Edwin Jagmoc, who chairs the Committee on Public Services of the City Council, said that they already asked the shipping companies to allow the honking of horns of their respective vessels to mark the start of the cleanup.

Some barangay officials promised that they will exercise political will in cleaning their territorial jurisdictions, but said that the program can only be sustained with the help of their constituents.

Rama agreed that everybody should unite in cleaning their surroundings because health problems like the prevalence dengue-related cases can only be addressed through communal efforts.

”Atimanon mo ang tugkaran mo kay kini katungdanan mo,” Rama said in reiteration of a program of the city government on cleaning and greening up the surroundings.

Further, Rama shared of his dream for the construction of a boulevard or a baywalk along the coastlines of barangays Ermita, Pasil, Sawang-Calero, Duljo-Fatima, Mambaling to Inayawan.

He admitted though that the city has failed to tear down some of the so-called eyesores in Pasil like the structure owned by a former barangay official there and the illegal structures encroaching into the Guadalupe River in Ermita.

“Sagdi lang, dili pa man ta mayor pagka karon. Moabot ra ang panahon nga hatagan ta ni’g pagtagad,” Rama said. — Rene U. Borromeo/MEEV   (THE FREEMAN)