Government will undertake from 2013 to 2016 a project on greening the banks of Pasig River as part of the National Greening Program (NGP) and efforts to rehabilitate this 19 kilometer-long major polluted waterway of Metro Manila.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission (PRRC) converged on the project, noting planting mangroves along the banks will help clean up and improve the water quality of the river so more biodiversity – including commercially important aquatic species – can thrive there.
“What we’ll plant will do the natural cleaning,” DENR Sec. Ramon Paje said Monday in Metro Manila where the agency and PRRC signed the memorandum of agreement covering the project.
PRRC is the body in charge of rehabilitating Pasig River so this waterway can truly function as an economic driver serving transportation, recreation and tourism purposes.
“We’re going to make Pasig River really pretty,” PRRC Chairperson Regina Paz Lopez assured during the event.
Under the agreement, DENR will provide P50 million as seed money for the project.
The fund’s release must be in accordance with the project’s work and financial plan as well as with NGP guidelines, the agreement notes.
Government launched NGP in 2011 to help reforest some 1.5 million hectares of open, denuded and degraded areas nationwide using an estimated 1.5 billion seedlings of various tree species.
The agreement also identifies PRRC as the project’s implementing arm.
Aside from furnishing DENR progress reports on the undertaking, PRRC will prepare the project’s required work program, plans, specification, costing and timetable.
PRRC is also duty-bound to disburse and liquidate the fund accordingly and to reimburse DENR the amount unutilized during the project.
For the project’s initial phase, DENR and PRRC chose to green Pasig River’s highly visible segment in the EDSA-Guadalupe area.
Such choice aims to help highlight need to rehabilitate Pasig River and what the private sector can do to help sustain this undertaking. (PNA)
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