The city government of Naga has put up Wi-Fi connections in 5 barangays selected as pilot areas for its community Wi-Fi program.

The project aims to provide students in elementary, secondary, and tertiary level with free online internet access, especially those whose families are hard-up and cannot afford to pay for such services.

“Within year 2021, we are planning to install more connections to cover the entire 27 barangays with at least 1 connection every barangay,” Reuel Oliver, head of the city’s Information and Technology Office, said.

He said that the city needs to deploy a total number of 135 community Wi-Fi to completely undertake the project after one more year based on the directive of Mayor Nelson Legacion who discussed the plan late last month with youth groups.

The 5 pilot barangays that now operate their respective community Wi-Fi after they were installed with modem and other equipment are the Barangay Tabuco (Fraternidad Street), Barangay Peñafrancia (Sitio Sagrada Familia), Barangay Lerma and the urban poor sites in the barangays of Pacol and Calauag.

The project will be managed by the Sangguniang Kabataan Council and youth organizations in the barangays who will be the ones to issue internet vouchers to students to be able to avail free internet access.

Oliver said that they ensure that the installation of community WIFIs will not affect or interrupt the operations of other internet connections in the communities.

He also said that the community WIFI are ready to extend services 24 hours a day, however, the access that will be given to each individual user will vary depending on the time they will need it. “Most of our college students prefer to spend their time for doing their home-works at night,” he said.

NAGA CITY — Three aerator machines and a submersible sewage pump were installed at the wastewater treatment plant of the sanitary landfill in Barangay San Isidro, here, to see to it that the water from the garbage facility is safe enough to be released to the Naga river.

Engr. Joel Martin, head of the Solid Waste Management Office, said aside from removing the contaminants from the wastewater, the machines would also be of help to mitigate the emission of foul-smelling air from the facility’s wastewater treatment plant.

The SWMO was assisted by the City Engineer’s Office and the General Services Office in setting up the aerators that each, including the pump, has 3 horsepower. The aerators and the pump were connected separately to 3-phase electric power system.

Martin said the delay in the installation of the machines, which were procured by the contractor from abroad, was due to the inclement weather that has been experienced for the past weeks. He said the pandemic also caused delay in the purchase of machines, a situation that made the treatment plant to cease operations for several weeks.

“That [situation] explains why there was unpleasant smell emitting from the area that lasted for a number of days,” Martin said. The SWMO, however, is using bio-deodorizer or eco-friendly odor eliminator to soothe the bad small, sometimes its personnel cover the garbage with soil.

The SWMO head said that with the installation of the machines, emission of noxious odor from SLF will be a thing of the past and one can expect also that the hazardous particles and elements in the water coming out of the treatment plant will be removed, thereby making the wastewater safe enough to be released to nearby Yabu creek.