Too little, too late?
That was the response of many residents to a recent executive order issued by the local chief executive of San Pedro City, Laguna, directing barangay captains to conduct regular cleanups of clogged canals and esteros in their constituencies.
The order drew mixed reactions from residents of certain subdivisions in San Pedro who had suffered not once, but twice (and possibly many times more as we entered the height of the rainy season).
Yet that executive order hammers home a question no one seems to have had the balls to ask: what the heck are our barangay officials doing to alleviate the problem of flooding in our barangays?
True, the city government has the shared responsibility of keeping our waterways clear – and, may we point out, spearheading ways to further solve the flood problem through the proper infrastructure.
But that our barangay officials had to be prodded to do their part meant that they, too, had failed in their mandate to keep their barangays safe havens, not pools of despair, during the rainy season.
As this newsmagazine had pointed out last week, it appears that our officials down to the barangay level had displayed an almost idiotic level of being lackadaisical (or, to use a uniquely Filipino term, “kampante”) during the summer season.
And now that we are reaping the grim consequences of being “kampante,” it’s alarming that we had to prod the very officials who should be at the forefront of flood control to do their part in resolving this periodic problem.
#WeTakeAStand #OpinYon #OpinYonNews #Editorial