The Manila Bay is surrounded by three regions; the National Capital Region, Region III, and the Region IVA. It also act as the country’s major center of economic activity ranging from shipping, industrial, fishing, commercial, aquaculture and tourism activities. With all the activities and development around the bay, it was at risk and is subjected to constant degradation. As an outcome it became polluted, thus making it the most polluted body of water in the Philippines as declared by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
This condition of the bay had started many rehabilitation campaigns that begun way back 1990s. On December 18, 2018, the Supreme Court gave a landmark decision ordering government agencies “to clean up, rehabilitate, and preserve Manila Bay, and restore its waters to SB level to make them fit for swimming, skin-diving and other forms of contact recreation. In addition, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Administrative Order No. 16 last February 19, 2019 to speed up the rehabilitation program and also created the Manila Bay Task Force. Since then, relocation projects, cleanups and mangrove planting were carried out.
As part of this bay rehabilitation program, around 3, 500 metric tons of artificial sand were shipped and dumped over the Manila Bay shoreline at the end of August. The artificial sand was said to be crushed dolomite boulders from a quarry in Cebu province and the project was funded with 389 million pesos.
This move of the DENR was criticized by environmental groups and government officials as well as by the Filipino citizens. Some says that it is not timely and a waste of the people’s money that should have been allocated to help the Filipinos affected by the pandemic or to provide gadgets for public school students who are now going into online learning. Several issues also surfaced like the project could have been overpriced and maybe instead of beautifying the bay. It could also pose more dangerous risk to the marine life since impact studies were sot said to be conducted beforehand.
However, according to Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, the project had passed Environmental Impact Studies and the budget for this was approved already before the Covid-19 Pandemic happened. He also added that this white makeover can help the Filipinos’ mental health.
This statement of the Presidential Spokesperson had gained many reactions and people were questioning its connection with their mental health. These were evident especially on social media sites wherein netizens made it into memes and are now circulating online. Some of these were defending this move of the government while some are against.
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