We support a waste-to-energy facility!

My family’s heartfelt condolences to the Tequillo Family, especially to Dr. Eve Hortelano Tequillo, on the passing of Mr. Jesus “Dodong” Tequillo last Tuesday at the Cebu Doctors hospital for pneumonia and complications of his kidney and heart. Dodong is the father of my son-in-law Atty. Jennoh Tequillo who is married to my eldest daughter Dr. Fara. If at all, we do share in having the company of our three grandchildren. But alas, Pareng Dodong won’t be able to see Fara’s 4th child due this October.

Pareng Dodong has been in and out of the hospital for the last three years due to his kidney failure, and was undergoing dialysis. Dodong was a simple but very joyful man who loved to sing and dance in family gatherings. In fact he’s having a failed kidney due to diabetes did not stop him from enjoying life. Sensing the depressing situation at the Asia Renal Care in Ma. Cristina St. on May 2010, he organized the KFC…a.k.a. Kidney Failure Club where he encouraged his fellow patients that they could still have some fun and songs.

Last year, on his birthday on Feb. 8 (he was born in 1948), we were invited to his birthday celebration at the Asia Renal Clinic where they truly had a joyous celebration singing Cebuano songs that Pareng Dodong loves with a passion. It was the first time for me to see this place and indeed, looking at all those machines that cleanse your blood was truly depressing. But Pareng Dodong Tequillo was the light of the group.

When he entered the hospital two weeks ago, I sensed that his time was finally up. I held his hand and told him that God loves him more than we ever could. Knowing how Pareng Dodong was a devoted husband and a great father to his children, all of them are already married and have become professionals, I knew that he has done his life mission to raise a good family. Somehow, the Lord took his hand on the Feast Day of St. Josemaria Escriva’ the Apostle of holiness in ordinary work.

His remains are at the St. Matthews chapel in St. Peter’s Funeral Home. His burial will be on Sunday afternoon after the 2:00pm Mass and he will be buried at the Angelicum Memorial Park in Talamban. May we request the pious reader to please pray for the repose of his soul.

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A couple of years ago, the Cebu media was invited to Taipei, Taiwan to see the clean coal-fired power plant used intensively by the Formosa Power Corp. which was part of the consortium that created the Cebu Energy Development Corp. the clean coal power plant in Sangi, Toledo City. What convinced many of us was when our good friend, Super Bobby Nalzaro of DySS with his usual all white outfit climbed up the top of the smokestack of the power plant beside a shopping mall where only steam was being emitted and no one got dirty with black soot. This is why all those so-called self-proclaimed but noisy environmentalists in Toledo City have now been kept silent… proof that new technology can improve an old technology.

One side trip that we took was a waste-to-energy facility where a huge garbage dump was turned into an industrial site where all the garbage in Taipei are collected, burned… and again, thanks to new technology, no smoke was coming out of the smokestack, which by the way had a great revolving restaurant with a terrific view of Taipei.

We’ve written this piece in the last two years… and finally we now read the news report that a US-based firm would invest some US$1.2 billion for a waste-to-energy facility. I’m not sure whether this is the same company that is also looking at putting a similar facility in the landfill in Cebu City. Mind you, we approved that landfill when I was chairman of the Regional Development Council (RDC-7) Infrastructure and Utilities Committee (IUC) and I never expected that landfill to be filled up so quickly.

Of course, these technologies are not cheap but if it can get power from our garbage, why not? Now if money is the problem, I suggest that the City of Toledo make a business out of the Bigaa pit, allowing cities to dump their garbage at the hole that the Atlas Mining dug for many years.

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If there is anything super confusing these days, it is whether or not Jordanian journalist Baker Atyani and his two Filipino cameramen, Ramelito Vela and Roland Letrico were kidnapped or not. A couple of weeks ago, these three journalists were reported missing in Sulu, then a week ago, the Philippine government denied that they were missing and today, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin still insist that they have not been kidnapped.

Yet the Jordanian Embassy insists that Atyani was kidnapped. So what really is the score? If at all something is seriously wrong, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) might be getting faulty intelligence on these three men. So let the PNoy government decide once and for all what really is the status of the missing men. Have they been kidnapped or not?

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