THE move of the city government of Davao to have all bicycles registered is one which is in the right direction.
Yes, last week we learned from Davao City Traffic Management Office Head Ret. Police Col. Dionisio Abude that effective within this last few says of the month of November it is now mandated by the city government that all those who owned bicycles must make sure that their units are registered with the city if they want not to be slapped with corresponding fines.
Personally, we believe that this should have been done a long time ago. Bicycles are used by those who are presumed to own it, and are regular fixtures in the city’s roads. In fact, in so many instances already bikes figured in road accidents in several cases even causing loss of lives or serious destruction of properties not to mention vehicular traffic build-up wherever the road accident happens.
Besides, there are cases when bicycles are used in committing crimes and suspects can easily go scot free as it is difficult for the police to track down the owners as these are not registered and the owners, whether they are the suspects or not, can afford to just let go of the bike because a single unit is just not too expensive.
And even if the owner has nothing to do with the crime committed using his bicycle he’d rather prefer not to get involved because of the inconvenience investigations will bring him or her. So, the owner can just conveniently let go of the bike.
Also, with the number of bicycles in the whole of the city, at P25 registration fee each, it sure can add up a substantial amount to the city’s treasury and can augment funds for project that may be relevant to bicycle users like allocation of road portions for bike lanes and its maintenance.
We can only hope that there will be substantial, if not full, compliance with this mandate of the city government. After all, the bicycle owners are the ones who stand to benefit from such regulation.
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Again we want to emphasize that we will never tire in tackling this issue in this column of ours, And we mean the still undistributed garbage bins to where these should be in the barangays which are recipients of these depositories of household refuse. The bins were delivered to certain rural villages in the third district, and possibly also in the second, before the onset of the CoViD 19 pandemic or roughly three years ago. And we have no doubt that the delivery of the bins to the barangay recipients was made possible through the City Environment and Natural Resources Office or CENRO.
But what we cannot understand is that these garbage receptacles are merely being piled in certain area near barangay halls until now. Who are responsible in distributing the same to where these are supposed to be located? Is it the barangay; the CENRO people or it has to be the residents in the communities concerned who badly need the bins for their household garbage disposal?
For the nth time we had been calling the attention of the CENRO and even the Mayor’s Office to look into what is holding the distribution of the bins so that people in the community can use them. In fact some of the recipient barangays now have the means to transport the same to where the bins should be. That is, if it is the responsibility of the village officials to distribute the same. Some barangays are “gifted” by certain Partylist politicians with brand new dump trucks. The barangays can very well use the vehicle instead of just to transport people for non-official business purposes like going to beaches.
And why are we so passionate on this particular issue? This is because the bins belong to the city and it is the people’s money that was used in acquiring the same. So, to let the bins lay idle with some starting to deteriorate is definitely a waste of the city’s resources.
Lately however, we saw brand new garbage truck haulers bearing inscriptions manifesting that these are owned by the city government. So we presume that there could be a possible stop in the contracting of dump trucks for garbage hauling purposes.
But whatever it is that the city, or the CENRO specifically, is planning to do, we can only hope that this will lead to the eventual distribution of the now ageing garbage bins.
