Illegal fish pens are back in Dagupan City

AFTER six tireless years of the Belen Fernandez administration’s efforts to clear the city’s tributaries of illegal fish pens that proliferated before 2013, the illegal fish pens are back with a vengeance in gross violation of the city’s fishing ordinance.

It has been pointed out that the illegal fish pens do not only pollute the city’s rivers but contribute greatly to the worsening flooding in the city.

We call on the city’s Sangguniang Panlungsod to do an ocular inspection around the island barangays and see for themselves how the owners of the illegal fish pens have found the gall not only to violate but completely ignore what the city’s ordinance and national law provide for the preservation of ecological balance in our communities.

Soon, the bottom of rivers will again be shallow, wasting all the resources and time done to dredge the rivers in the past 6 six years, just to mitigate flooding in the city’s streets because the city is practically below sea level.

Who among our newly elected and appointed city officials stand up for our environment and Dagupeños? It is evident that the City Agriculture Office has again turned blind, deaf and mute to the rampant violations of the city ordinance obviously on the direction of the mayor’s office.    

Is this the legacy that Brian Lim administration wants to leave behind, much like what his father, former Mayor Benjamin Lim left for the city to remember? To be a haven for illegal fish pens with the official protection from the city hall without regard to the hazards posed by their operations to the community and the environment? Is it?

Limitless patience

ONE of the hardest positions to take in any administration is that of being the Press secretary also known as the Palace spokesman.  It is not a post to envy.  Never.  Many have rejected it simply because the job entails a myriad of problems.  First and foremost, he is the President’s first line of defense.  What the spokesman says, it’s virtually the word of the chief occupant in Malacanang.   Every mistake he makes, it’s the President’s.  What the President says, the spokesman mouths it hook, line and sinker.  When the President goofs, the spokesman becomes the shock absorber, if not the first explainer in attempting to right, at times, Malacanang’s misplaced spin. 

Such is the weight lodged on Salvador Panelo’s shoulders that if he is not a man of steel, he might have quit a long time ago.  His patience must not only be kilometric but limitless.  Not to be thick-skinned, too.

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