BAGUIO CITY February 27 – The City General Services Office (GSO) announced that the city’s garbage trucks, streetsweepers, additional job order workers and volunteers are ready to work round-the-clock collecting the expected huge volume of waste that will be generated by residents and visitors who will be witnessing the two major events of the 24th edition of Panagbenga or the Baguio flower festival, particularly the grand streetdancing parade and the grand float parade.
City General Services officer Eugene Buyucan reported that the local government is ready to deploy the 5 newly-purchased garbage trucks in the central business district area to ensure that the waste from the spectators of the two major Panagbenga highlights will be collected within a reasonable period of time to prevent unscrupulous social media enthusiasts from taking pictures of the garbage piled along collection points and tainting a bad image of the city by posting the same in the social media.
“We appeal to our residents and visitors to be responsible social media users. If they post something damaging to the city, then it is also their responsibility to post whatever corrective measures done in the garbage that piled up in certain collection points because we were able to address the same in few hours and the garbage did not stay in the area forever,” Buyucan stressed.
Aside from authorizing the existing streetsweepers to render overtime work during the staging of the festival highlights, he added the city government also hired 15 additional job order personnel to assist the streetsweepers in ensuring the cleanliness of the parade route right after the conduct of the twin festival highlights.
According to him, there are also hundreds of volunteers from the different private and public schools in the city who will be joining the twin parades and staying at the end of the parade to follow the parade route and help in the collection of the waste that will be left behind by the spectators.
Buyucan called on residents and visitors situated along the parade route to practice utmost discipline in the disposal of their garbage to prevent this from being left behind in the areas as they follow the parade which will commence at the Baguio Athletic Bowl for the streetdancing parade and at the Melvin Jones grandstand for the grand float parade. He suggested that spectators bring with them containers where they could initially place their garbage and dispose the same in identified collection points along the parade route instead of leaving their garbage in the areas where they were positioned.
Last December, Buyucan claimed there were social media postings on the garbage pile at a collection area in Burnham park but there were no postings after the pile was cleared a few hours later by personnel of the local government and volunteers.
He emphasized that street sweepers and the volunteers are doing their best to collect the same although there are really instances that they could not do the job in a single sitting because of the huge volume of waste by no less than undisciplined spectators of the parade and other major events in the city.
By Dexter A. See
