GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/15 April) — The city council has completed the codification or classification of the city’s ordinances that were passed since 1948.
Vice Mayor Shirlyn Bañas-Nograles, who heads the codification project’s technical working group (TWG), said Monday they recently submitted to the council’s plenary the final report on the codification initiative, which covered all enacted ordinances from 1948 to 2010.
She said the report includes the codified ordinances, which were classified into 37 categories or subject areas.
“We deliberated, reviewed and assessed all these ordinances and eventually updated those considered obsolete as well as harmonized some of those that were found duplicative and conflicting with the other measures,” Nograles said.
The vice mayor said they launched the project in November 2010 to create a system for all ordinances enacted by the past and present city councils and ensure that they remain relevant for the city, especially its constituency.
She said numerous ordinances had been enacted by the council since 1948 and most of them became “obsolete, unmodified and unsystematic” as time passed.
Nograles said a number of them became “duplicative and conflicting with one another,” affecting their implementation.
“Most of these ordinances remain inaccessible to the public even with the current computer technologies,” she said.
Nograles said the project’s first phase, which was initially handled by city council personnel and student trainees and volunteers, involved the compilation and inventory of all ordinances and their listing, classification, coding and encoding into electronic copies.
She said the TWG created by the council later conducted a series of en banc committee hearings that ended in late December.
“During these hearings, the draft of the codified ordinances were discussed and deliberated further to finally come up with the most suitable version. There were several topics lengthily discussed that later resulted to the amendment and repeal of some ordinances and chapter provisions,” the vice mayor said.
Among the ordinances that were subjected to intensive deliberations and consultations were those regarding the senior citizens, youth and sports, transportation as well as the creation and naming of barangays and the naming of the city’s streets and public structures, she said.
Nograles said the TWG also conducted study tours and benchmarking activities in several local government units in Mindanao and inspected the actual projects and programs that were implemented by the local government based on passed ordinances.
As a result of its benchmarking activities earlier conducted in Cagayan de Oro City, the group recommenced the setting of regulatory measures that sets the orderly establishment of posts and attachment of cables and wires, specifically within the central business district and suburbs of the city.
“The city’s streets are strewn with unsightly abandoned, unbundled, unused and non-functional posts, cables and wires, thus, posing hazards to persons and properties, primarily because of lack or absence of stiffer regulation,” a TWG report said.
Nograles said they are presently pushing for the final approval by the council of the codified ordinances, which was dubbed General Santos City Code of Ordinances.
She said that the codified ordinances were properly coded and referenced for easy use and they adopted a tracking system for them.
“These will be made available and accessible to the people later on through the council’s website,” she added. (Allen V. Estabillo/MindaNews)