DTI to support move to lessen use of plastic bags in Leyte

TACLOBAN CITY – Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Regional Director Cynthia Nierras said that they will fully support a proposed ordinance authored by Leyte First District Board Member Roque Tiu that will seek to lessen the usage of plastic bags in the province.

This announcement of Nierras was made in the weekly press forum “Express it at the Park” saying that said ordinance is a great help to their campaign for Filipino to go back to basics and use indigenous materials such as “bayong” when doing groceries and going to market.

“We take this as a welcome development because we in the department had been promoting the usage of “bayong” for two years now,” said Nierras.

“With this(proposed) ordinance, this would be of great help in our advocacy to lessen the bad effect of plastic in our environment as we all know and witnessed its dreadful effect happened during Ondoy’s time,” Nierras said.

“Although we are campaigning for the use of bayong, we are not setting aside plastic bags because we still need to use this particularly when we buy wet products, ” Nierras added.

“I hope that this ordinance once passed will be implemented by the respective local government units in the province, for this is a good and commendable ordinance,” Nierras said.

In the program of the DTI to promote bayong as a substitute to plastic bags, she revealed that there are 18 bayong producers which their agency had provided with assistance like in the technical aspects of coloring and designing.

Here in Leyte, among the municipalities that have been focusing on bayong production are Carigara and Baybay.

Meantime, Board Member Tiu said that he had provided copies of the draft of his ordinance to his fellow board members to solicit additional inputs that would be useful improve his proposed ordinance and to know if they wish to act as co-sponsor.

He added that aside from implementing it in the province, he plan to recommend it for both the cities of Tacloban and Ormoc to adopt similar ordinance considering that most of big business establishments are located in this two cities.

Although they are seeking to lessen the use of plastic bags, Tiu said that there will be considerations under his proposed ordinance as there are products in the market that needs plastic bags for packing.

“We need to consider everything in this ordinance, but we are creating this for our future generations,” Tiu added. (ROEL AMAZONA)