We welcome a bi-partisan support for WTE
If decisions for the improvement of Cebu City, especially any proposal to solve our perennial garbage disposal problems, would be left to people like Teddy Navea, Secretary General of Sanlakas-Cebu then you can kiss any solution to our garbage problem like the Waste-to-Energy (WTE) solution goodbye! Sanlakas issued a position paper saying, "Incinerators threaten human health, pollute our air, land and water, harm our economies, contribute significantly to global warming and fuel an unsustainable system of consumption and wasting. WTE has been proven to be the most expensive, most polluting, most energy intensive and most inefficient way to generate electricity."
Sanlakas swears by Republic Act. No. 8749 or the Clean AirAct, which was enacted on July 27, 1998, 19 years ago when new and better technologies for WTE projects were not yet available. I have been to Japan and Taiwan and saw their WTE plants. Contrary to what Sanlakas is telling us, the Japanese and the Taiwanese are not complaining about their WTE plants polluting the atmosphere, creating a health hazard in their cities or towns. But we in Cebu are ashamed that our garbage trucks (many of them spill garbage into our streets) are hauling trash to landfills that are already overflowing and polluting the neighborhood.
These people are very good in opposing anything that the City of Cebu has thought of, but they do not give alternative solutions that are workable. Incidentally, there is already a WTE plant in Lapu-Lapu City and I don't hear people living there complaining about the alleged pollution that Sanlakas is telling our people about. That a WTE project is one efficient way of getting rid of our garbage makes it a very attractive idea.
In the meantime, I was elated to hear that the WTE proposal for Cebu City is being supported even by opposition councilors, which gives us an idea that our Cebu City councilors would throw away their political issues when it comes to solving Cebu City's most pressing problem of garbage disposal.
Indeed the WTE is a project that we needed yesterday and we welcome the bi-partisan effort to make this project a reality.
So I dare say that we should have a "damn-the-torpedoes" attitude and get this WTE project as soon as possible, and damn Sanlakas for their opposition to this project! I just hope that our councilors will not listen to Sanlakas just because they are opposed to this project.
***
Last week, we read a news report that quoted Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV saying the bank transactions of President Rodrigo Duterte and his family through the years amount to a total of more than P1 billion as revealed by Overall Deputy Ombudsman Arthur Carandang as it continued its investigation into the complaint of Trillanes.
Last May 2016 Sen. Trillanes filed a plunder complaint against then Mayor Duterte alleging that there is P2.4 billion worth of deposits in Duterte's account. Apparently that figure has now been reduced by at least a billion. I have no doubt that Sen. Trillanes is off on a fishing expedition, otherwise if he truly has the bank records of Pres. Duterte, his figures would be right on the dot and accurate!
Allow me to reprint the news report on this issue, "Overall Deputy Ombudsman Arthur Carandang confirmed that the Deputy Ombudsman for Mindanao, which is handling the complaint that covers the time when Duterte was still Davao City mayor, had requested their office to help validate with the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) the list of bank transactions in Trillanes' documents. The Office of the Ombudsman had asked the AMLC in August to do a bank inquiry and submit its final report on the alleged Duterte accounts. The Ombudsman now has a copy of bank records from theAMLC which, according to Carandang, "more or less" look like the documents submitted by Trillanes."
Last Sept. 28, the AMLC denied providing the Ombudsman with documents and information related to the investigation of the bank accounts of Pres. Duterte. Naturally this report angered Pres. Duterte who threatened to do his own investigation of the Office of the Ombudsman. Now Pres. Duterte has exhorted Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales and Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno to resign with him. Are things really this bad in this country?