BAGUIO CITY—Residents of Barangay Camp 7 are pinning their hopes on the local government in evicting the batching plant in their midst, which they have long been complaining about as a nuisance and a hazard to the environment and the health of people in the said area.
The concerned residents claimed the relocation of the batching plant to a place outside the city has been a long-standing commitment of the owner to city officials led by Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan after the passage of Ordinance No. 43, series of 2007 that prohibits the operation of cement batching plants within the jurisdiction of the city.
While the local court upheld the unconstitutionality of the ordinance but is now on appeal by the city before the Court of Appeals, the concerned residents demand that the owner keep his word given to local officials that he will relocate his plant outside the city and not to use legal issues to ensure his continuous operation in the area against the will of the affected individuals.
In fact, the concerned residents are disappointed that local officials had been too lenient by tolerating the operation of the batching plant without the relevant business permit as only a business permit as a general contractor was issued to the owner which is not the permit for the operation of a batching plant.
The affected residents appealed to the city’s leadership to immediately evict the batching plant to give them peace of mind and stop the nuisance and pollution from this environmentally critical facility.
According to them, the management committed to city officials that it will voluntarily relocate the batching plant outside the city, thus, there is no need for it to resort to legal means just to delay the relocation because it was a gentleman’s agreement.
However, several years has passed and the commitment has been forgotten, thus, the residents are sending a strong message to the city officials that they enforce whatever agreements reached with management in the past to prevent further inconveniences on their part as bona fide residents in the place.
The residents allege that the haphazard stockpiling of aggregates by the management reportedly clogged an existing multi-million drainage system which forced concerned government agencies to construct another drainage facility on the other side of the road resulting in a waste of public money instead of being programmed for other major projects in the city.
They claimed they had suffered too much because of this batching plant and the management must be compelled to comply with its commitment to relocating and not to wait for the local government to evict it, and the expenses for the relocation is not their concern because the commitment came from them and not from anybody else.