INTRODUCTION
It is in keeping with the spirit of the season that we hold this turnover ceremony of solid waste management equipment two days after Christmas.

As with Christmas, these equipment have two aspects to them: giving and receiving.

On the giving end is the Japanese government through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) whose generosity has culminated in this phase iii of a grant covering the purchase of 108 garbage trucks and 23 landfill equipment. On behalf of the Filipino people and our government, I accept this latest batch with a warm “Domo arigato gozaimasu-ta!” to the Japanese government and people, represented here by Ambassador Hirozaku Arai.

On the receiving end are our local government unit-beneficiaries who have been chosen as the recipients of these equipment. As the city and municipal mayors here with us today receive the keys to these units, I hope you will remember always the enormous responsibility that goes with what has been granted to you. Henceforth, I expect your areas not only to be trash-free, but also expect these equipment to be always properly maintained and used primarily for their intended purpose.

TOWARDS MORE CLEANING AND GREENING
It would still be in the spirit of the season that as we give thanks to the good lord, we correspondingly give our commitment to take greater care of the environment which is given by God.

It behooves us to maintain clean communities and dispose of our garbage properly for the sake of our health and that of our children and neighbors. Just as importantly, it is each local government executive’s duty to energize and mobilize the sense of community pride and household discipline in their respective constituencies.

This starts with the individual and the family and should result in developing the values of working together for a common goal and of having order and cleanliness around them. All this soon translates into other productive endeavors that can lead to our people’s social welfare and economic progress.

Let all of us take our cue from the example set by Fr. Benigno Beltran, parish priest of the Smokey Dumpsite in Tondo. I recently granted his request for financial assistance in the amount of p1.6 million to buy two dump trucks for a waste management project of hauling garbage from households and business firms and recycling the trash to users and manufacturers. Here, we see how a depressed community, through a cooperative it established, is turning garbage collection into an income-generating endeavor by its own resourcefulness. For converting trash into cash, the members of the cooperative help themselves and help the community.

The necessity of cleaning and greening our environment has been driven to us time and again by the tragedy of recent disasters. These could have been avoided had people protected instead of abused our mountains, forests and rivers. While there is still time, therefore, I urge all our local officials and countrymen to clean and green with greater intensity and dedication now — to avert nature’s greater fury over our carelessness and negligence.

I take this opportunity to remind everyone of the search we have launched for the cleanest and greenest local government units in 1994. At the end, we also intend to announce the poorest performers (dirtiest) local government units. As an incentive to sincere participation in this contest, we are relating the prioritization of assistance from the national government to the performance of communities in this Clean and Green Drive.

You the LGUs that have received equipment from the JICA grant actually have an advantage over others in this campaign. But there is an added responsibility, too. In addition, therefore, to monitoring the use of the equipment by the recipient towns and cities, I hereby direct the presidential task force on waste management to particularly monitor how the recipients fare in the ongoing clean and green competition.
CLOSING
These garbage trucks, compactors and landfill equipment received today, as well as those that came before them, will be most useful throughout 1994 and the years beyond. But let us develop and organize the most useful kind of waste management equipment — the individual and the family. The habit and discipline of cleanliness starts with them.

Let me thank our kind donors, the Japanese government and people whose high officials are with us today. I call upon our communities everywhere throughout our vast archipelago to protect themselves by managing waste wisely and protecting our earth environment.

Maraming salamat at manigong Bagong Taon sa inyong lahat.