By Benjamin Cuaresma
MANILA — Throwing garbage into the streets, canals and waterways could soon become a P5,000 mistake as the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) presses cities across the capital region to turn a tougher anti-littering policy into enforceable local law.
MMDA Chairman Romando Artes said the Metro Manila Council has approved the P5,000 penalty for littering in the region’s cities, but implementation still depends on the passage of corresponding ordinances by individual local governments.
For Pateros, the lone municipality in Metro Manila, the penalty is set at P2,500.
Artes said the MMDA is awaiting the required city ordinances and will follow up on their passage during the next Metro Manila Council meeting.
The push comes as the capital confronts a problem that refuses to disappear: garbage choking waterways while government continues spending manpower, equipment and public money to clean up the mess.
At the Redemptorist water channel in Parañaque, the MMDA has intensified cleanup operations after a massive amount of garbage accumulated in the waterway.
Additional equipment, including a skimmer, has been deployed to remove floating waste and prevent it from being swept back toward the sea during high tide.
The situation exposes Metro Manila’s vicious cycle:
Government cleans. People dump. Waterways clog. Flooding worsens. Government cleans again.
The proposed P5,000 penalty is an attempt to break that cycle by putting a heavier price on irresponsible behavior.
But the real battle will not be won inside the Metro Manila Council meeting room.
It will be won—or lost—on the streets.
A penalty is useless if violators believe nobody will catch them.
Metro Manila already has rules prohibiting littering and improper waste disposal. What has often been lacking is sustained, visible and consistent enforcement.
That makes the individual ordinances now being sought by the MMDA crucial.
Cities must translate the regional policy into enforceable local rules, deploy personnel capable of apprehending violators and ensure that penalties are applied fairly—without favoritism and without selective enforcement.
Otherwise, the P5,000 figure risks becoming nothing more than another number printed in a government resolution.
The trash problem is also directly tied to Metro Manila’s continuing drainage difficulties.
Manila Mayor Isko Moreno said the city government is working to improve its drainage system within its available resources, while acknowledging problem areas along portions of Taft Avenue, the Philippine General Hospital area, Kalaw, United Nations Avenue, Abad Santos Avenue and España Boulevard.
But even the most expensive drainage project cannot perform properly if garbage continues to find its way into canals and waterways.
Every plastic bag, food container and discarded piece of trash thrown onto a street can eventually become part of a much bigger problem when rain and floodwaters carry it into the drainage network.
And when waterways overflow, it is the public that ultimately pays for the cleanup and the damage.
The P5,000 penalty should therefore be more than a deterrent.
It should be a warning that public spaces are not personal garbage bins.
Metro Manila cannot keep throwing millions of pesos at cleanup operations while allowing the behavior that creates the garbage problem to continue unchecked.
The MMDA has put the penalty on the table.
Now the cities have to put the ordinances in place.
And after that, enforcement must follow.
Because if government is serious about cleaning Metro Manila, the goal cannot simply be to collect more garbage.
The goal must be to stop people from throwing it there in the first place.
For Metro Manila’s trash throwers, the message should now be unmistakable: litter today, pay tomorrow.
ia/xf
