Sardines for garbage eyed

How to get Cebu City residents to personally turn over their garbage to the collectors? How about giving them canned sardines?

Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña disclosed his proposal to reporters, saying this may help the city save on buying additional garbage loaders and new garbage trucks.

The mayor plans to distribute cans of sardines to those residents who will personally deliver their wastes to the garbage trucks passing their barangay.

“This is only an experiment. We will be going to try it now. If it works, we will just give out sardines to everybody,” he said in an ambush interview during the visit of Vice President Leni Robredo in Barangay Luz, Cebu City yesterday.

Instead of indiscriminately throwing their garbage, Osmeña said residents will make sure that it will be thrown properly since they will get something in return for it.

He said there is still no specifics on the plan like how many kilos of garbage will be exchanged for how many cans of sardines.

Osmeña said they will consider making Barangay Lahug a pilot area and they will make adjustments so they can set up guidelines on the program.

Roberto Cabarrubias, Department of Public Services (DPS) chief, said the mayor shared with him his plan after his return from the US.

He said he patterned it after a certain city in Brazil which gives people eggs in return for delivering their garbage.

Cabarrubias said he suggested to the mayor that it will be better if they give sardines instead of eggs.

He said there is still no exact date as to when the plan will be implemented since they are still repairing the mini-compactors given by Japan last year.

In the province, the Cebu provincial government said they will consult with residents of the northern Cebu town of Carmen before they finalize plans to set up a sanitary landfill there.

Baltazar Tribunalo Jr., who heads the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (PENRO), said they are still reviewing proposals from private proponents for the project.

“We will see to it that the landfill won’t compete with traffic, that’s why there is a proposal for barging. And since it’s a landfill, every after dumping of garbage, it will be filled,” he told Cebu Daily News.

Tribunalo said some residents and officials of Barangay Dauis Sur in Carmen staged a protest against the landfill project which will be set in a 17-hectare area there owned by the province.

Tribunalo said he looks at the protest as a positive development since it shows that the community is proactive.