City councilors ask Mayor Osmeña: Whatever happened to flood control?
After proposing a P313-million budget for garbage collection next year, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña is being asked by city councilors to explain, through his department heads, why very little is allocated for drainage and flood control programs when constant flooding in the city is of equal importance.
CDN FILE PHOTO
2018 ANNUAL BUDGET
A whopping P313- million budget proposal for garbage collection, versus a measly total of P30.8- million allocation for drainage and flood control projects, has gotten opposition Cebu City councilors off their feet and into the drawing board as they intend to scrutinize, piece-by-piece, the 2018 Cebu City budget proposed by Mayor Tomas Osmeña.
The councilors want clear explanations on why the executive department seems to have little concern for constant floods that could reach knee-deep in major parts of the city after only about 20 minutes of heavy rain.
As far as the councilors are concerned, like solid waste management, the floods – notorious as they have become – is an equally pressing concern which the city needs to address.
“I don’t mind a big budget for garbage program, but the executive does not deserve it because I think they have wasted a lot of garbage funds entering into disadvantageous contracts,” said Councilor Jose Daluz III.
“On the other hand, flood mitigation is equally important but for the executive, it’s not a priority. So sad. We will see what we can do in the council,” Daluz added.
Last week, the mayor submitted his 2018 budget proposal which amounted to P6.3 billion.
Of the amount, drainage and flood control program got an allocation of only P3.5 million and P4 million for other supplies and material expenses. Another P23.3 million worth of flood control systems in various barangays was included under the city’s Local Development Fund (LDF).
In contrast, P313 million was set aside for the city’s privatized garbage hauling services; while another P65.4 million was proposed for the rental of equipment for the Department of Public Services (DPS).
The huge disparity has given Barug Team Rama councilors another reason to question the city’s current garbage collection set-up.
For one, the city is renting 21 dump trucks and compactor trucks at a rate of P700 per hour to augment the city’s garbage collection for 24 hours a day – a contract, which they believe is too expensive and grossly disadvantageous for the city.
Opposition councilors said a better system would be to pay these trucks based on the volume of garbage collected instead of an hourly rate.
On top of this, they said, the city’s current contract with Jomara Konstruckt Corp., which is the one hauling the city’s garbage to a private landfill in Consolacion town at P1,296 per ton has also been very “impractical.”
Because of the city’s current contract arrangement with Jomara, the garbage collected from north district barangays have to go all the way to Barangay Inayawan, where the transfer station is located, when it would have been a lot easier for the trucks to go directly to Consolacion to dump garbage because of the town’s proximity to Cebu City’s north district.
While the city pays P1,296 per ton to Jomara, barangay and city garbage trucks would only pay P700 for every ton of garbage dumped directly at the landfill.
“We just need to go back to the system implemented during the term of former mayor Mike Rama wherein the barangays in the north district throw garbage directly to the Consolacion landfill and only those in the south will throw garbage through a transfer station,” said Councilor Jocelyn Pesquera, former head of the council’s committee on budget and finance.
On the other hand, there is a need to increase the allocation for flood control and mitigation considering the recent episodes of worsening flash floods in the city over the past months, Pesquera said.
Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) President and Cebu City Councilor Philip Zafra intends to ask the city’s Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) to explain the discrepancy in the budget allocations for two equally disturbing city problems: garbage collection, on the one hand, and drainage and flood mitigation measures, on the other.
“I for one couldn’t understand as to why the city only allocated that much for flood control considering the worsening drainage problem that we have,” said Zafra.
Zafra, who is the barangay captain of Tisa, did not have to look far. He said that even in his own barangay, there are several drainage programs that the city had yet to implement such as a P30.9 million drainage project in Emeral St., Sta. Teresita Village.
Councilor Raymond Alvin Garcia lashed at Osmeña for not prioritizing the flooding and drainage concerns of the city in the mayor’s budget proposal.
“You can see here that flooding and drainage are not his priorities. Ever since before, it is not his priority. For me, it’s sad because we will always have this problem again and again,” Garcia said.
While Garcia agrees on the need to prioritize garbage collection, he disagrees with the mayor’s manner in doing it saying that there are “more efficient ways”.
Osmeña had said earlier that while it may look expensive on paper, renting garbage trucks would actually come out to be more economical for the city as it would spare the local treasury of the costs needed to maintain and repair its own trucks.
Osmeña said that for now, his focus is on addressing the current garbage situation of the city. Once the problem is solved, he said that the city will focus on cutting the costs of its garbage collection and disposal program.
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