Cleanliness of our public plazas and markets

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BY JOHNNY NOVERA
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Wednesday, November 29, 2017
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AFTER organizing his management team and support staff at city hall, we are pleased to note that in his first month of office Iloilo City mayor Jose Espinosa III has directed his efforts to bring order and cleanliness in our public plazas and markets. Soon we hope our problem in Mandurriao plaza and in our public market will be attended to like what he did in Jaro.

We have an anti-littering ordinance in force but our problem is that we are not strict in enforcing it. People are throwing their trash on the streets especially in public places but no one is being apprehended.

There are sweepers assigned at our public plaza and on the streets nearby in Mandurriao but they could hardly cope with the trash especially from the tent stores that set up business here during the district   fiesta.

Every morning the market and street sweepers have a hard time doing the cleaning.  As an idea, what if we empower them to help enforce the anti-littering ordinance and catch violators so they can earn a share from the fines and augment their income as casual hires?

We think that cleanliness is a matter of strict enforcement of the anti-littering law or regulation.  That is how we clenched a Gold Award on the Iloilo River in 2010 from LivCom, an international body based in Chicago,  Illinois, USA.

We have kept the Iloilo River clean to this day, including the river walks along its banks, but why can’t we keep our public plazas and the roads in front of our markets clean?

Maybe, the problem of our plaza in Mandurriao are the vendors and pula-puti joints which we allow to put up business at the plaza whenever Holy Week or fiesta comes. It is about time we stop making our plazas as public markets.

NEW PASTORAL ASSIGNMENT

Our parish priest in Mandurriao, Rev. Fr. Winifredo Losaria, will leave on Thursday (Nov. 30) to assume another assignment as new parish priest of Miag-ao, Iloilo.  Like a good soldier, priests are not to question why wherever they are sent to serve by the Lord.

As our parish priest in the last four years, Fr. Winnie or Padre Losaria, as his parishioners familiarly call him, is a very hard-working servant of the Lord that strongly uplifted the faith of Mandurriaonons.

Physically, he also greatly improved the facilities and services of the parish in the period that he was assigned here.

He restored the kinder school program of the church in our community by rebuilding the school. He likewise introduced more improvements in the parish like putting up a roofed prayer and meeting area between the convent and the church building for use of various church organizations; built a four-room wake area cum chapel to cater and serve the families of the bereaved in our parish; and put up a columbarium behind the church wall for the convenience of parishioners in storing the ash or transferring the bone remains of their departed.

Fr. Losaria will be replaced by Fr. Jose Alberto Guillen who is coming from the parish of Barotac Viejo and will arrive in Mandurriao on Thursday to take over the parish. (For comments or re-actions, please e-mail to jnoveracompany@yahoo.com)/PN

 
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