President Marcos has ordered village officials and the citizenry to work together in achieving a clean Philippines, stressing that their initiative is what the country needs to win the war against waste.
In a video message on Friday, Jan. 5, Marcos made a lengthy call to communities and their leaders to collaborate in maintaining an orderly and clean country.
He made the call ahead of the National Community Development Day celebrated on Jan. 6.
The President encouraged them to "see in our barangay the changes we want for our nation" as he said that "Filipinos do not deserve dirty, dingy, or dark communities."
"Let our barangays be the laboratory of workable ideas, a showcase of what we can achieve together, and proof that the basic government unit, the barangay, teems with best practices," he said.
Marcos told the citizenry that there is no place for dirt in the communities, stressing that rivers are not sewers through which trash flows out to seas.
He lamented that "because of plastic, they have become dead pools of marine life, cellophanes choking corals to death, microplastics ending up in the fish that we eat."
The Chief Executive underscored that when it comes to cleanliness, constructive action will always be better than any app, noting that the government can only do so much.
"We cannot deploy sweepers who will follow each citizen around and pick up every trash that is thrown. We cannot spend tens of billions a year collecting garbage whose volume could have been reduced through individual daily reuse and recycling," he said.
"At the end of the day, it is not only modern equipment that will win the war against waste. It will be won by citizens equipped with the habit not to litter and whose allegiance to a clean and green community has become second nature to them," he stressed.
Marcos also ordered all concerned agencies to include cleanliness in the performance guarantees of local government units (LGUs) and give incentives to LGUs that have commendable cleanliness initiatives.
He further said that every day must be a community development day, encouraging Filipinos to join in the activities and gatherings during the National Community Development Day.