FOUR barangays—with the cleanest, healthiest and best in solid-waste management—have emerged as winners and received P1 million worth of livelihood products each from the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) on Thursday. Among the winners in the Barangay Power 2014 are Barangay Holy Spirit (Category A) and Barangay Blue Ridge B (Category D) both in Quezon City, as well as Barangay Fort Bonifacio (Category B) in Taguig City and Barangay New Zuñiga (Category C) in Mandaluyong City. The awarding ceremony was held at the newly inaugurated MMFF Cinema in Makati City.
The MMDA divided the barangays into four categories: Category A for barangays with big income and area, Category B for middle-income and middle-size area, Category C for small income/small area and Category D for village-barangays.
“Barangay Power aims to motivate all barangays in Metro Manila to implement the provisions of the Republic Act [RA] 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000,” MMDA General Manager Corazon T. Jimenez said. In sharing their best practices, Felicito Valmocina, chairman of Barangay Holy Spirit, said her barangay is the only one that has garbage collection independent from the Quezon City government. Valmocina said Barangay Holy Spirit has 11 garbage trucks and has its own environmental police monitoring the garbage collection and segregation.
For his part, Edwin Cruz, chairman of Barangay New Zuñiga, said his barangay officials used their political will to instill discipline among residents to strictly observe the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.
“I personally put violators behind bars for them to learn the lessons of disposing wastes properly,” Cruz said.
Joyce Medina, president of the Metro Manila Mayors Spouses Foundation, a partner of MMDA in the Barangay Power project, called on the winners and finalists to share their practices to their neighboring barangays. “I hope that you can all be inspirations and good examples to others. Don’t hesitate to share your programs that are beneficial to the environment to other barangays,” Medina said.
MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino said that since the inception of the Barangay Power project in 2012, they have been encouraging barangays to assume the responsibility of managing their solid waste. This was due to the high rate of solid-waste generation in Metro Manila that remains to be one of the major development challenges of a rapidly growing urban center.
“At the rate we are going, I am proud to say that we have taken an inclusive and holistic approach to the once dysfunctional solid-waste management system,” Tolentino said.
Coinciding with the awarding ceremony was the launch of Barangay Power 2015, in which hundreds of barangays, whether big or small in area and income, will show off their strongest competitive advantage in keeping their respective areas clean and healthy.
For this year’s contest, the MMDA has increased the prize to P2 million, but also revised the criteria to provide more emphasis on the compliance with RA 9003. The rate for RA 9003 compliance was increased from 40 percent to 60 percent, with a corresponding increase in the required solid-waste diversion rate from 25 percent to 50 percent.
The rate for cleanliness was reduced to 20 percent from its former 60 percent. Another 20-percent rate was devoted for livelihood development using recyclable materials.