Man of the Year 2011
RIGHTING – rather than just fighting – wrongs.
Forged in the crucible of the Marcos dictatorship, Edgardo Dizon Pamintuan is steeled in the protection and promotion of human rights, and thus fated to a public life of correcting human errors, political, social and fiscal, administrative and criminal: his end in view, a society grounded on the democratic ideals of equality and liberty; his goal-in-hand, a community sharing in prosperity.
Pamintuan’s persona as honourable mayor of Angeles City makes the latest – if arguably, the greatest – testament to this: taking over a city awash in wrongs, if only to set everything in it aright, and how! As a call of duty, at the instance, mayhaps even at the insistence, of destiny.
City accursed
Nowhere was the accursed state of the Angeles that Pamintuan inherited more graphically presented than in the city turned into an open dump of stinking garbage, uncollected since the Nepomuceno administration’s defaulting on its P64-million debt with the Kalangitan sanitary landfill.
Consequently, Sapang Balen Creek was made to serve as the city’s most convenient depository of wastes: biodegradable, non-biodegradable, non-segregated from the households, the meat processing plants, yes, even from the city abattoir.
No amount of sumpa cast upon the polluters of Sapang Balen by the Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio David, auxiliary bishop and Holy Rosary parish priest, stirred, much less moved Nepomuceno’s city hall to lift a cleaning hand, sufficing itself in lipping support to the leadership of the prelate.
A travesty, Among Ambo retorted, as it is city hall that should lead the cleaning of Sapang Balen, the support coming from the citizens. There lay where the responsibility truly rested, and sadly failed.
Elsewhere was just as bleak, benighted even: a number of city hall offices literally lost in the dark of an outage imposed by the Angeles Electric Corp. failing to collect from the Nepomuceno government.
In the dark, the devil dances in delight. So it is alliterated, as much as clichéd. So it was in Angeles. The darkness of the human soul found manifest in the series of murders: city icon Aling Lucing, the sisig queen, businessmen Ting and Punzalan, the half-brother of apl.de.ap of the Grammy Award-winning Black Eyed Peas, Pulung Maragul chairman Edilberto Cayanan and ex-Malabanas chairman Thelmo Lalic, a number of foreigners – both tourists and retirees, among scores of others – almost all the cases yet to find a single suspect. This, notwithstanding the Nepomuceno administration spending tens of millions of pesos in upgrading the police’s firepower and mobility. Why, for just four motorcycles, over P4-million was spent! And these were neither Ducatis nor Harleys.
Dying was fairly easy in the city. To the underprivileged, the indigents most especially. What with a city hospital living up to the Mona Lisa ditty – “…they just lie there, and they die there.” For lack of medical facilities, shortage of medicines and dearth of health workers.
Getting proper public education was difficult. The sore lack of classrooms and teachers as acute as the availability of city-sponsored scholarship grants. Even as the City of San Fernando started its own college in 2008, and the still-aspiring-to-be-a-city Mabalacat establishing its community college even earlier, Angeles – a city since 1963 – did not have its own. A solid indictment of the city government’s failure to provide for the education of its youth. A crime of heinous proportions, given the constitutional guarantee of free education; a sin of mortal proportions, given the moral authority reposited in the state.
Grand edifice complex
It is incorrect to say though that the Nepomuceno administration did not do anything in the face of all these problems besieging Angeles City. As a matter of record, it did. And in so doing displayed its grand edifice complex.
One, it engaged in a beautification and lighting campaign of all rotundas along the city’s main avenues – setting multi-colored-blinking lights thereat, which – it was storied—contributed to the increase in the number of vehicular accidents in the city.
Two, it contracted an P800-million loan from the Philippine Veterans Bank for the construction of a sports complex in Barangay Mining, the access road to which built specifically for tricycles; the valuation of the site, given to speculation, raising so much suspicion.
Up to the task
More maladministration than simple mismanagement, the Nepomuceno government’s undoing of Angeles City assumed the proportions of the mythic Augean stables requiring no less than herculean efforts to clean up.
Up – and apt – Mayor Pamintuan is proving himself to that task.
Sound fiscal management shielded the city government from the whammy that was the P40 million slashed from the city’s internal revenue allotment arising from the Supreme Court decision upholding the establishment of 16 more cities in the country.
Pamintuan was the least worried of the loss and its effect on the programs, projects and services to his constituency: “Our daily cash balance has never gone below P100 million, our cash position totals to P297 million. This despite the inherited debt of P17 million in electric bills alone.”
Not to mention the P64-million debt the previous administration incurred with the Kalangitan landfill which Pamintuan likewise solved via renegotiation, that even accrued to savings of up to P600,000 monthly for the city. Garbage fees have been reduced from P1,500 to P1,300 per ton.
The city’s “significant turnaround” in its fiscal management included revenue-raising programs, and the exorcism of ghost employees from the city’s JO (for job order) workforce, reaching up to 65 percent. Greater confidence in the Pamintuan administration has brought in greater investments too.
Seal of Good Housekeping
No less than the Department of the Interior and Local Government has given due recognition to the sound fiscal management of the city, bestowing upon the Pamintuan administration the Seal of Good Housekeeping that carried with a local government support fund of P25 million to be utilized as capital expenditure to augment the approved 2012 annual investment program for implementation of projects ranging from rural electrification to roads, from local economic enterprises to flood control and drainages, or as support to the national projects as the Millennium Development Goals and the Philippine Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010.
Pamintuan said the P25-million LGSF can very well serve as a “buffer” to the loss of P53 million in IRA shares this year.
Solid fiscal fundamentals
Odious they truly are, but comparisons between past and present administrations make the standards of a city’s progress, or retrogress and so make an imperative study. Thus Nepomuceno’s 2009 fiscal accomplishments matched against Pamintuan’s January-November 2011 achievements:
In real property tax collection: Nepomuceno – P177,912,354.34; Pamintuan – P194,182,200.56.
In business tax collection: Nepomuceno – P223,045,646.10; Pamintuan – P309,957,893.70.
In non-tax revenues as regulatory fees like permits and licences, service users charges, income from economic enterprises, other income and receipts: Nepomuceno – P80,657,085.12; Pamintuan – P91,743,520.27.
In total income from local sources: Nepomuceno – P481,615,085.56; Pamintuan – P595,883,614.53.
Cold, hard figures showing who enriched – immensely – the city coffers. The difference implying – albeit not affirming – who enriched whom as immensely.
The increase in the financial resources of the city directly translates to the increase in public spending for programs and projects redounding to the benefit and welfare of the Angeles City constituency.
EDucation
The Agyu Tamu tertiary scholarship fund was increased to P5 million in 2011 and to be upped further to P6.5 million in 2012 to accommodate more deserving but indigent students.
In partnership with 1st District Rep. Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin and the private sector, the city government is currently engaged in the rehabilitation of dilapidated classrooms and the construction of additional ones throughout the city’s public elementary and high schools.
For 2012, the centrepiece project of the Pamintuan administration in the field of education is the Angeles City College to start construction in January at the Agyu Tamu Sports complex beside the Angeles City National High School compound in Barangay Pampang.
A total of P300 million has been allocated for the college, the amount coming from the P800-million loan the Nepomuceno administration contracted for a sports complex.
Prudence, said Pamintuan, dictated that an education facility can better serve the “felt and urgent needs” of the Angeleno than a sports complex.
The Angeles City College will specialize in market-responsive courses that fit the available job opportunities at the Clark Freeport Zone and the emerging enterprises in the city.
It is reported that at any given day, Clark has some 3,000 job vacancies but the locators have problems in recruitment because of an apparent mismatch of the skills and training of the available manpower with the job requirements.
PESO serves
That the City Public Employment Services Office was elevated to the national PESO hall of fame in 2011 is proof positive of the Pamintuan administration’s success in providing jobs to the Angelenos.
In the three consecutive years that the city PESO won the National Best PESO Award, it was able to serve 9,373 residents with 5,326 directly finding employment within the city and 548 abroad.
The city PESO is also continuously engaged in providing free training programs to the out-of-school-youth to afford them sources of livelihood.
Street wise
Angeles City was a study in anarchy, where its streets were concerned. Traffic was horrendous, the lights installed by the Nepomuceno administration at major intersections – reportedly at a cost of millions – serving more decorative than utilitarian purposes. The traffic aides – what little presence of them – more part of the jams than the smooth flow of vehicles.
Pamintuan’s approach to the problem was holistic: deploying 150 traffic enforcers on all major roads, clearing the sidewalks of ambulant vendors, re-routing traffic from chokepoints, holding consultative meetings with stakeholders like TODAs and JODAs.
Pamintuan’s close coordination with Representative Lazatin and the Department of Public Works and Highways also effected the widening and asphalt-overlaying of principal streets in Sto. Domingo, Pandan, Pulung Bulo, Sto. Cristo and Sto. Entierro, and in the widening of the Pulung Bulo bridge to four lanes.
Healthcare
Unarguably, the greatest achievement of Pamintuan in the field of health for 2011 was the establishment of the renal care unit at the Rafael Lazatin Memorial Medical Center.
With its 15 dialysis machines, the RCU has started serving some 350 mostly indigent patients a month – a tremendous help, given the high cost of dialysis treatment in private hospitals.
The city government has likewise embarked on a program to expand the bed capacity and improve the facilities and services of the RLMMC, to be at par with the best private hospitals in the city.
In this regard, P50 million – again from the P800-million loan for the sports complex – has been allotted for a new annex building of the hospital.
“We are convinced that Mayor Pamintuan is doing an incredible job in fulfilling his health programs for his constituents and this is the reason why WMRI continues to prioritize Angeles City among its recipients.”
So said George Samson, the chief executive officer of the US-based World Medical Relief Inc., recently as he disclosed that a 40-foot container van of medical equipment including ultrasound and electrocardiogram machines, hospital beds, wheelchairs, dental chairs, emergency carts, laboratory instruments and other medical supplies, set to arrive in January 2012 solely for the RLMMC.
The WMRI had, as far back as Pamintuan’s first term as mayor in 1992-1995, already donated to the then Ospital ning Angeles numerous medical equipment most of which are still in use today at RLMMC.
In 2011 alone, medical equipment the city received from the WMRI comprised of a C-arm X-ray machine, a cardiac monitoring machine, an ultrasound machine, reverse-osmosis machine for dialysis system, defibrillator and a phaco-machine.
Aside from the WRMI,
Through its heath outreach program, the city has been continuously giving free medicines, including maintenance medicines for hypertension, diabetes, heart ailment and others, to the public at the RLMMC, the city health office, the mayor’s office and his my home and during the regular barangay days. Tens of thousands of people continually benefit from this program.
Caring for Mother Earth
“When we started cleaning Sapang Balen some years back, we were told by the city government (under then-Mayor Francis Nepomuceno) that they would support us. No, we told them, we are the one’s supporting you. Today, that has come to pass, the city government of Mayor Pamintuan leading, all of us supporting. This is a dream come true.”
So hailed Bishop David Lingap ku king balen. Malinis a Sapang Balen, the program to clean the city’s principal waterway as well as other creeks and rivers.
Initiated by Pamintuan, the clean-up drive started last October with scores of students, city employees, civic groups and individual volunteers clearing with their bare hands, rakes, shovels and other implements the Sapang Balen and Abacan creeks of wastes. It will be undertaken every first Saturday of the month “until the waterways are restored to their pristine nature.”
“Taking care of God’s creations, of Mother Earth herself, for the next generation is also paramount in my hierarchy of values,” Pamintuan says, seeing in the devastating typhoons and floods “nature exacting its toll for all the abuses man committed against her.”
Task Force 1 Million Trees has been formed by the city government with the express intent to plant that number within the current term of Pamintuan to re-green Angeles and alleviate the ill effects of climate change.
Cultural revival
“Above all, a city needs a soul.” Famous words of the Blessed John Paul II. And what makes a city’s soul but its faith-based culture and tradition?
Pamintuan sparked a cultural renaissance in the city with the revival of long-lost festivals and practices like the serenata, the las flores de los angeles, the lubenas for Christmas, the Crissotan, the polosa, among others, and the celebration of the arts in the monthly music-painting-photography fusion dubbed Art at the Park on the grounds of the Museo ning Angeles.
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions, the city government commissioned the publication of Agyu Tamu: Turning Tragedy into Triumph celebrating the indomitable spirit of the people of Angeles.
The defining festival of the city – Tigtigan, Terakan king Dalan – that which sounded the call for the Angelenos to rise from the ashes of the volcanic eruptions and soar – phoenix-like – to the firmament of development, that which was reduced to insignificance by the previous administration with its insipid “street party” perversions of it, came back with a vengeance with the return of Pamintuan – breaking records in attendance and cash flows to fund more socio-cultural projects for the city.
Empowerment
“I want Angeles City to be the most sensitive city and local government in the Philippines to gender equality and gay rights.” Thus declared Pamintuan in his speech at the induction rites of the city-based United Gay Power Movement (UGPM) last November.
Pamintuan directed the creation of a Gay Rights Desk as an adjunct of the Angeles City Multi-Sectoral Consultative Council where LGBTs – that is lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders – in the city can expect various types of services and projects for the promotion of their rights and welfare.
“It is our way of recognizing the role and potentials of the gay sector in the development and progress of our city,” Pamintuan said.
Pamintuan’s initiative has merited delight from the gay community.
“We are thankful for the city government’s support in the endeavors of the gay community in Angeles leading towards our full empowerment as a sector,” said Michelle Jhoie Ferraris, UGPM president. “Through united gay power and action, we will show the community why we are here and not just to make you beautiful, not only to make you laugh, but even more so, to actively contribute in the genuine development of this vibrant city and our society.”
The gay sector is but the latest among the groups that have been empowered by the Pamintuan administration, engaging them in the various programs and projects of his administration as well as in policy-formulation. Represented in the collegial Angeles City Multi-Sectoral Council are the city chamber of commerce and industry, the senior citizens, the academe, labor, market vendors, the youth, artists and craftsmen, indigenous people, even the urban poor.
Pamintuan has made governing Angeles City a shared responsibility. More than protection and promotion, what Pamintuan achieved here is the optimization of the inherent right of the citizen in a democratic society.
Forged in the crucible of the Marcos dictatorship, Edgardo Dizon Pamintuan is steeled in the protection and promotion of human rights, and thus fated to a public life of correcting human errors, political, social and fiscal, administrative and criminal: his end in view, a society grounded on the democratic ideals of equality and liberty; his goal-in-hand, a community sharing in prosperity.
Pamintuan’s persona as honourable mayor of Angeles City makes the latest – if arguably, the greatest – testament to this: taking over a city awash in wrongs, if only to set everything in it aright, and how! As a call of duty, at the instance, mayhaps even at the insistence, of destiny.
City accursed
Nowhere was the accursed state of the Angeles that Pamintuan inherited more graphically presented than in the city turned into an open dump of stinking garbage, uncollected since the Nepomuceno administration’s defaulting on its P64-million debt with the Kalangitan sanitary landfill.
Consequently, Sapang Balen Creek was made to serve as the city’s most convenient depository of wastes: biodegradable, non-biodegradable, non-segregated from the households, the meat processing plants, yes, even from the city abattoir.
No amount of sumpa cast upon the polluters of Sapang Balen by the Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio David, auxiliary bishop and Holy Rosary parish priest, stirred, much less moved Nepomuceno’s city hall to lift a cleaning hand, sufficing itself in lipping support to the leadership of the prelate.
A travesty, Among Ambo retorted, as it is city hall that should lead the cleaning of Sapang Balen, the support coming from the citizens. There lay where the responsibility truly rested, and sadly failed.
Elsewhere was just as bleak, benighted even: a number of city hall offices literally lost in the dark of an outage imposed by the Angeles Electric Corp. failing to collect from the Nepomuceno government.
In the dark, the devil dances in delight. So it is alliterated, as much as clichéd. So it was in Angeles. The darkness of the human soul found manifest in the series of murders: city icon Aling Lucing, the sisig queen, businessmen Ting and Punzalan, the half-brother of apl.de.ap of the Grammy Award-winning Black Eyed Peas, Pulung Maragul chairman Edilberto Cayanan and ex-Malabanas chairman Thelmo Lalic, a number of foreigners – both tourists and retirees, among scores of others – almost all the cases yet to find a single suspect. This, notwithstanding the Nepomuceno administration spending tens of millions of pesos in upgrading the police’s firepower and mobility. Why, for just four motorcycles, over P4-million was spent! And these were neither Ducatis nor Harleys.
Dying was fairly easy in the city. To the underprivileged, the indigents most especially. What with a city hospital living up to the Mona Lisa ditty – “…they just lie there, and they die there.” For lack of medical facilities, shortage of medicines and dearth of health workers.
Getting proper public education was difficult. The sore lack of classrooms and teachers as acute as the availability of city-sponsored scholarship grants. Even as the City of San Fernando started its own college in 2008, and the still-aspiring-to-be-a-city Mabalacat establishing its community college even earlier, Angeles – a city since 1963 – did not have its own. A solid indictment of the city government’s failure to provide for the education of its youth. A crime of heinous proportions, given the constitutional guarantee of free education; a sin of mortal proportions, given the moral authority reposited in the state.
Grand edifice complex
It is incorrect to say though that the Nepomuceno administration did not do anything in the face of all these problems besieging Angeles City. As a matter of record, it did. And in so doing displayed its grand edifice complex.
One, it engaged in a beautification and lighting campaign of all rotundas along the city’s main avenues – setting multi-colored-blinking lights thereat, which – it was storied—contributed to the increase in the number of vehicular accidents in the city.
Two, it contracted an P800-million loan from the Philippine Veterans Bank for the construction of a sports complex in Barangay Mining, the access road to which built specifically for tricycles; the valuation of the site, given to speculation, raising so much suspicion.
Up to the task
More maladministration than simple mismanagement, the Nepomuceno government’s undoing of Angeles City assumed the proportions of the mythic Augean stables requiring no less than herculean efforts to clean up.
Up – and apt – Mayor Pamintuan is proving himself to that task.
Sound fiscal management shielded the city government from the whammy that was the P40 million slashed from the city’s internal revenue allotment arising from the Supreme Court decision upholding the establishment of 16 more cities in the country.
Pamintuan was the least worried of the loss and its effect on the programs, projects and services to his constituency: “Our daily cash balance has never gone below P100 million, our cash position totals to P297 million. This despite the inherited debt of P17 million in electric bills alone.”
Not to mention the P64-million debt the previous administration incurred with the Kalangitan landfill which Pamintuan likewise solved via renegotiation, that even accrued to savings of up to P600,000 monthly for the city. Garbage fees have been reduced from P1,500 to P1,300 per ton.
The city’s “significant turnaround” in its fiscal management included revenue-raising programs, and the exorcism of ghost employees from the city’s JO (for job order) workforce, reaching up to 65 percent. Greater confidence in the Pamintuan administration has brought in greater investments too.
Seal of Good Housekeping
No less than the Department of the Interior and Local Government has given due recognition to the sound fiscal management of the city, bestowing upon the Pamintuan administration the Seal of Good Housekeeping that carried with a local government support fund of P25 million to be utilized as capital expenditure to augment the approved 2012 annual investment program for implementation of projects ranging from rural electrification to roads, from local economic enterprises to flood control and drainages, or as support to the national projects as the Millennium Development Goals and the Philippine Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010.
Pamintuan said the P25-million LGSF can very well serve as a “buffer” to the loss of P53 million in IRA shares this year.
Solid fiscal fundamentals
Odious they truly are, but comparisons between past and present administrations make the standards of a city’s progress, or retrogress and so make an imperative study. Thus Nepomuceno’s 2009 fiscal accomplishments matched against Pamintuan’s January-November 2011 achievements:
In real property tax collection: Nepomuceno – P177,912,354.34; Pamintuan – P194,182,200.56.
In business tax collection: Nepomuceno – P223,045,646.10; Pamintuan – P309,957,893.70.
In non-tax revenues as regulatory fees like permits and licences, service users charges, income from economic enterprises, other income and receipts: Nepomuceno – P80,657,085.12; Pamintuan – P91,743,520.27.
In total income from local sources: Nepomuceno – P481,615,085.56; Pamintuan – P595,883,614.53.
Cold, hard figures showing who enriched – immensely – the city coffers. The difference implying – albeit not affirming – who enriched whom as immensely.
The increase in the financial resources of the city directly translates to the increase in public spending for programs and projects redounding to the benefit and welfare of the Angeles City constituency.
EDucation
The Agyu Tamu tertiary scholarship fund was increased to P5 million in 2011 and to be upped further to P6.5 million in 2012 to accommodate more deserving but indigent students.
In partnership with 1st District Rep. Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin and the private sector, the city government is currently engaged in the rehabilitation of dilapidated classrooms and the construction of additional ones throughout the city’s public elementary and high schools.
For 2012, the centrepiece project of the Pamintuan administration in the field of education is the Angeles City College to start construction in January at the Agyu Tamu Sports complex beside the Angeles City National High School compound in Barangay Pampang.
A total of P300 million has been allocated for the college, the amount coming from the P800-million loan the Nepomuceno administration contracted for a sports complex.
Prudence, said Pamintuan, dictated that an education facility can better serve the “felt and urgent needs” of the Angeleno than a sports complex.
The Angeles City College will specialize in market-responsive courses that fit the available job opportunities at the Clark Freeport Zone and the emerging enterprises in the city.
It is reported that at any given day, Clark has some 3,000 job vacancies but the locators have problems in recruitment because of an apparent mismatch of the skills and training of the available manpower with the job requirements.
PESO serves
That the City Public Employment Services Office was elevated to the national PESO hall of fame in 2011 is proof positive of the Pamintuan administration’s success in providing jobs to the Angelenos.
In the three consecutive years that the city PESO won the National Best PESO Award, it was able to serve 9,373 residents with 5,326 directly finding employment within the city and 548 abroad.
The city PESO is also continuously engaged in providing free training programs to the out-of-school-youth to afford them sources of livelihood.
Street wise
Angeles City was a study in anarchy, where its streets were concerned. Traffic was horrendous, the lights installed by the Nepomuceno administration at major intersections – reportedly at a cost of millions – serving more decorative than utilitarian purposes. The traffic aides – what little presence of them – more part of the jams than the smooth flow of vehicles.
Pamintuan’s approach to the problem was holistic: deploying 150 traffic enforcers on all major roads, clearing the sidewalks of ambulant vendors, re-routing traffic from chokepoints, holding consultative meetings with stakeholders like TODAs and JODAs.
Pamintuan’s close coordination with Representative Lazatin and the Department of Public Works and Highways also effected the widening and asphalt-overlaying of principal streets in Sto. Domingo, Pandan, Pulung Bulo, Sto. Cristo and Sto. Entierro, and in the widening of the Pulung Bulo bridge to four lanes.
Healthcare
Unarguably, the greatest achievement of Pamintuan in the field of health for 2011 was the establishment of the renal care unit at the Rafael Lazatin Memorial Medical Center.
With its 15 dialysis machines, the RCU has started serving some 350 mostly indigent patients a month – a tremendous help, given the high cost of dialysis treatment in private hospitals.
The city government has likewise embarked on a program to expand the bed capacity and improve the facilities and services of the RLMMC, to be at par with the best private hospitals in the city.
In this regard, P50 million – again from the P800-million loan for the sports complex – has been allotted for a new annex building of the hospital.
“We are convinced that Mayor Pamintuan is doing an incredible job in fulfilling his health programs for his constituents and this is the reason why WMRI continues to prioritize Angeles City among its recipients.”
So said George Samson, the chief executive officer of the US-based World Medical Relief Inc., recently as he disclosed that a 40-foot container van of medical equipment including ultrasound and electrocardiogram machines, hospital beds, wheelchairs, dental chairs, emergency carts, laboratory instruments and other medical supplies, set to arrive in January 2012 solely for the RLMMC.
The WMRI had, as far back as Pamintuan’s first term as mayor in 1992-1995, already donated to the then Ospital ning Angeles numerous medical equipment most of which are still in use today at RLMMC.
In 2011 alone, medical equipment the city received from the WMRI comprised of a C-arm X-ray machine, a cardiac monitoring machine, an ultrasound machine, reverse-osmosis machine for dialysis system, defibrillator and a phaco-machine.
Aside from the WRMI,
Through its heath outreach program, the city has been continuously giving free medicines, including maintenance medicines for hypertension, diabetes, heart ailment and others, to the public at the RLMMC, the city health office, the mayor’s office and his my home and during the regular barangay days. Tens of thousands of people continually benefit from this program.
Caring for Mother Earth
“When we started cleaning Sapang Balen some years back, we were told by the city government (under then-Mayor Francis Nepomuceno) that they would support us. No, we told them, we are the one’s supporting you. Today, that has come to pass, the city government of Mayor Pamintuan leading, all of us supporting. This is a dream come true.”
So hailed Bishop David Lingap ku king balen. Malinis a Sapang Balen, the program to clean the city’s principal waterway as well as other creeks and rivers.
Initiated by Pamintuan, the clean-up drive started last October with scores of students, city employees, civic groups and individual volunteers clearing with their bare hands, rakes, shovels and other implements the Sapang Balen and Abacan creeks of wastes. It will be undertaken every first Saturday of the month “until the waterways are restored to their pristine nature.”
“Taking care of God’s creations, of Mother Earth herself, for the next generation is also paramount in my hierarchy of values,” Pamintuan says, seeing in the devastating typhoons and floods “nature exacting its toll for all the abuses man committed against her.”
Task Force 1 Million Trees has been formed by the city government with the express intent to plant that number within the current term of Pamintuan to re-green Angeles and alleviate the ill effects of climate change.
Cultural revival
“Above all, a city needs a soul.” Famous words of the Blessed John Paul II. And what makes a city’s soul but its faith-based culture and tradition?
Pamintuan sparked a cultural renaissance in the city with the revival of long-lost festivals and practices like the serenata, the las flores de los angeles, the lubenas for Christmas, the Crissotan, the polosa, among others, and the celebration of the arts in the monthly music-painting-photography fusion dubbed Art at the Park on the grounds of the Museo ning Angeles.
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions, the city government commissioned the publication of Agyu Tamu: Turning Tragedy into Triumph celebrating the indomitable spirit of the people of Angeles.
The defining festival of the city – Tigtigan, Terakan king Dalan – that which sounded the call for the Angelenos to rise from the ashes of the volcanic eruptions and soar – phoenix-like – to the firmament of development, that which was reduced to insignificance by the previous administration with its insipid “street party” perversions of it, came back with a vengeance with the return of Pamintuan – breaking records in attendance and cash flows to fund more socio-cultural projects for the city.
Empowerment
“I want Angeles City to be the most sensitive city and local government in the Philippines to gender equality and gay rights.” Thus declared Pamintuan in his speech at the induction rites of the city-based United Gay Power Movement (UGPM) last November.
Pamintuan directed the creation of a Gay Rights Desk as an adjunct of the Angeles City Multi-Sectoral Consultative Council where LGBTs – that is lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders – in the city can expect various types of services and projects for the promotion of their rights and welfare.
“It is our way of recognizing the role and potentials of the gay sector in the development and progress of our city,” Pamintuan said.
Pamintuan’s initiative has merited delight from the gay community.
“We are thankful for the city government’s support in the endeavors of the gay community in Angeles leading towards our full empowerment as a sector,” said Michelle Jhoie Ferraris, UGPM president. “Through united gay power and action, we will show the community why we are here and not just to make you beautiful, not only to make you laugh, but even more so, to actively contribute in the genuine development of this vibrant city and our society.”
The gay sector is but the latest among the groups that have been empowered by the Pamintuan administration, engaging them in the various programs and projects of his administration as well as in policy-formulation. Represented in the collegial Angeles City Multi-Sectoral Council are the city chamber of commerce and industry, the senior citizens, the academe, labor, market vendors, the youth, artists and craftsmen, indigenous people, even the urban poor.
Pamintuan has made governing Angeles City a shared responsibility. More than protection and promotion, what Pamintuan achieved here is the optimization of the inherent right of the citizen in a democratic society.
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 9:35 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home