LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The municipal government recently recognized the countless efforts of the hundreds of Bantay Basura advocates from the town’s sixteen barangays that contributed in sustaining proper waste management in the barangay level.
Mayor Romeo K. Salda and Vice Mayor Roderick Awingan led local officials and personnel of the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office (MENRO) in giving honor to the significant contributions of the volunteers in maintaining and sustaining the proper disposal of garbage within their areas of jurisdiction.
The recognition of the Bantay Basura advocates was part of the year end assessment and capability building that was conducted by the local government to the volunteers for them to be empowered to continue informing and educating the residents on the proper waste disposal to maintain cleanliness in the municipality.
The recognition ceremony was done at the Puguis communal forest which is an ideal place to pay tribute to the unrelenting and uncompromising efforts of the Bantay Basura advocates in maintaining orderliness and cleanliness within their areas of jurisdiction to avoid the occurrence of garbage disposal problems in the municipality.
Mayor Salda lauded the volunteers for their utmost patience and dedication to their duties and responsibilities and for their sacrifices in having to deal with difficult situations just to ensure that the garbage being dumped by residents in the identified pick up points are appropriately segregated prior to being collected by the garbage collectors from the local government.
He also commended the barangay officials for their sustained support to the Bantay Basura advocates in their respective barangays as they were able to provide the needed support to the volunteers for them to be able to effectively and efficiently perform their assigned tasks, especially during the disposal and collection of garbage in the identified pick up points in the barangays.
Earlier, the local government engaged the services of Bantay Basura advocates to help in ensuring that residents appropriately dispose of their garbage in the designated pick up points to ensure the smooth collection that will be done by the assigned garbage collectors to prevent the town’s Alno controlled dump facility from being immediately filled up.
Salda appealed to the residents to continue practicing the segregation of their garbage at source so that only the residual waste will be dumped at the designated pick up points.
The mayor underscored that the voluntarism being displayed by the Bantay Basura advocates should serve as an inspiration and motivation for the youth to be actively involved in similar volunteer groups for them to be of help to others and the whole community where they live in.
La Trinidad was able to establish its own controlled dump facility in barangay Alno since the enactment into law of Republic Act (RA) 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act that prohibited local governments from continuing the operation of their open dumpsites to ensure the protection of the environment and the health of the people living in the communities near the said dumpsites. By Dexter A. See
