Cabrera quits
Former city councilor Nida Cabrera has tendered her resignation as head of the Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CCENRO). This is an interesting development considering Cabrera’s long-running ties with Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who was in Manila when news of the resignation came out. Will the mayor allow Cabrera to leave?
The bigger question there, though is why? Cabrera refused to divulge the reason for his move. “There is really no problem, I just want to rest,” she said. But other reports say she admitted to having a conflict with City Councilor Eugenio Gabuya Jr. Still other say she claimed to be no longer happy with his work.
Gabuya is the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK) councilor who recently filed measures involving the Inayawan dump site. He sought funding for the rehabilitation of the dump site area. He also filed another measure seeking the construction of a centralized materials recovery facility (MRF) also in Inayawan.
Chances are Gabuya will also be the one who will push for the approval by the city council of a waste-to-energy facility, which seems to be the end game of all the current initiatives by the Office of the Mayor in the Inayawan dump site, which has been ordered closed by the Court of Appeals (CA). For me, all those initiatives may lead to a de facto reopening the dump site rendering ineffective the CA order.
The question there is whether Cabrera had an input in these or was she and her office bypassed? All the plans for the Inayawan dump site should involve the CCENRO because in the final analysis these concern the environment. When the Inayawan dump site was reopened early in Osmeña’s term, wasn’t Cabrera a central figure then, coordinating with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources?
I criticized Cabrera then for being complicit in the environmental degradation of the barangay, which is the birthplace of my wife, and the nearby coastal area where the South Road Properties (SRP) now stands. But I could not be harsh on her considering that she was only following Osmeña’s orders. My only misgiving was that she is an environmentalist and should have stood her ground.
I thus think the statement that she is no longer happy with her work could be closer to the truth. She is head of an office under an administration that apparently does not share her concern for the environment. Proof of that is the proposed P6.2 budget for 2018 that the mayor submitted to the city council.
A recent Facebook post by City Councilor Joel Garganera claimed that allocation for the city’s Environmental Sanitation and Enforcement Team is ) while only minimal amounts were appropriated for the city’s Clean Air Law Enforcement Program, Water Quality Management Program and Mining Regulation and Enforcement.
As I already noted before, everything that the mayor is doing under his present term seems to be focused on the 2019 elections. Priority programs are either intended to win votes (ex. “Basura Mo, Sardinas Ko”) or to generate campaign funds (I don’t need to elaborate on this one). Perhaps I will have to congratulate Cabrera for finally gathering the courage to leave.