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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Wednesday, February 15, 2017
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BACOLOD City – City government enforcers were clearing roads to be used during an international event next month.
But obstructions keep coming back, according to Executive Assistant Celestino Guara, chairman of the Task Force on Operation Panghawan.
Mayor Evelio Leonardia created the task force via Executive Order No. 4, series of 2017 dated Feb. 10, citing the need to “smoothen the flow of traffic on the roadways by removing illegal obstructions.”
While tasked to clear the streets year-round, the task force will first focus on removing obstructions on major roads in preparation for the city’s hosting of Asean Summit meetings in March, Guara said.
Among such obstructions were dilapidated vehicles, vending stalls and unauthorized signage.
According to Guara, the owners do not resist when Task Force on Operation Panghawan personnel drive them away and dismantle their structures, but they come back the moment the enforcers are gone.
“It’s like we’re playing hide-and-seek,” the retired police senior superintendent lamented.
The task force has no choice but to put up with the stubbornness of some locals.
Some of its enforcers roam the city or stand by an area to drive the owners of road obstructions again if they see them come back.
The Bacolod Traffic Authority Office started the clearing operation several weeks ago.
The city is hosting two Asean Summit meetings: one from March 14 to 16 and another from March 21 to 24.
Aside from clearing major roads, city hall must also “remove informal settlers from danger zones, such as banks of waterways like rivers and creeks,” said Leonardia.
Task Force on Operation Panghawan must “monitor the systematic planning, effective implementation and sustained action on the removal of illegal obstructions from roads,” said the mayor.
It must also “coordinate with private, faith-based, nongovernment, or people’s organizations that will serve as its citizen’s watch group in monitoring the removal operations and the re-encroachment of illegal obstructions on roads and their shoulders and informal settlers on danger zones.” (With Bacolod City PIO/PN)
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