A cleaner Caloocan in 100 days

Many eyebrows were raised in disbelief, but a determined Caloocan City Mayor Enrico Echiverri yesterday declared he would clean up the city in 100 days.

The self-imposed deadline came following the weeklong Barangay Garbage Summit at the city hall’s Bulwagang Katipunan.

Some 200 barangay leaders from the city’s two districts attended the "clean-up" summit, a measure geared at pushing Echiverri’s Reform Caloocan Movement and one of the mayor’s priority concerns in his first three months in office, Environment Sanitation Service chief Alfonso Sta. Maria said.

Echiverri said he does not possess superhuman powers to do the clean up job alone.

"Unfortunately, your mayor is not Superman. Cleaning up the city in 100 days is a tough job all right but it is doable. But only kung tulong-tulong tayo," he told the summit attendees.

Garbage contractors and their representatives also attended the summit to thresh out nagging problems on waste disposal in the city.

"Without your support and active participation, nothing will come out of any program we will push in cleaning up and beautifying our neglected city," said the mayor, who is focusing on his campaign promise to "fight crime and grime" in the city.

The barangay leaders hailed the mayor in turn for initiating the summit showing the administration’s sincere effort to show the public a really clean Caloocan City long "ravaged by urban blight and official neglect."

After the summit, an official from Barangay 8 reported that for the first time in three years, a garbage truck finally entered their area.

Echiverri has warned garbage contractors they run the risk of getting their contracts cancelled if they fail to collect garbage religiously in their assigned areas.

The city hall has exiting garbage-hauling contracts with Dominus Services Corp., Dodge Services, Halrey Construction, tiger Construction, RM Maintenance Services, LD Mariano, LFC Trucking Services, Fel-Gene Construction and R&F Trucking. The previous administration allocated P400-million for garbage disposal.