Cebu City Council resets special session to tackle garbage

LABELLA

THE special session of the Cebu City Council which was called to tackle the city’s garbage woes was reset to Friday morning because of lack of quorum.

Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella said yesterday that upon consultation with the council’s majority floor leader Councilor James Anthony Cuenco, he found out that many of the councilors are still on leave.

“If possible, we want all the members of the council to attend. Others have previous commitments. The majority floor leader said that not many can attend (yesterday) so we were in doubt that quorum can be achieved,” he said.
Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña would have wanted the special session to be done yesterday.

Labella, who is the presiding officer of the City Council, said he received the mayor’s request for a special session last Tuesday morning.

Osmeña announced that the executive department intends to make another emergency procurement to hire again a service provider that will haul the city’s garbage into a final dumping site or landfill of their choice.

Sought for comment on the postponement of the special session, Mayor Osmeña said he was okay with it.

“It’s okay. It looks like it is going to be smooth. We have to do series of emergency (special) sessions because after that we have to do another one, so we can already appropriate up to the end of the year,” he told reporters yesterday.

The second emergency procurement is supposed to cover the month of January.

For now, Department of Public Service (DPS) chief Roberto Cabarrubias said the city and the barangays will continue to dump its garbage at the two private transfer stations located in Barangay Inayawan since they cannot continue dumping at the temporary transfer station at the South Road Properties (SRP).

The new transfer stations were contracted by Jomara Konstruckt Corp., the private hauler contracted by the city in its first emergency procurement last December.

Even if the city’s agreement with Jomara already expired last December 31, Cabarrubias said the city was allowed to continue dumping its garbage at the transfer stations “out of goodwill” by the private contractor.

Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) chairman Ronaldo Malacora said that in the second emergency procurement, they will already require the winning service provider to have its own transfer station — a requirement which was not included in the first procurement.

He said, though, that the approved budget cost for the hauling will still be not more than P1,400 per ton.

Bids and Awards Committee
Meanwhile, Osmeña said after this second emergency procurement, he wants the city to already conduct a public bidding to determine the service provider that will haul the city’s garbage after this month.

“I don’t like emergency purchase because it is not transparent. It is not a real form of bidding, it is an emergency. I am tired of emergency. It is a source of graft and corruption. I want real competition. I want bidding. (This will be the) last emergency (procurement). Rest will be bidded out,” he said.
The DPS has an approved budget of P121 million for the entire year for its garbage collection and disposal program.

A portion of this budget will be used for the emergency procurement while the rest will be used to pay the service contractor that wins in the bidding, for the rest of the year.

But Osmeña believes that the amount will not be enough for the entire year, that is why he is already planning to submit a supplemental budget to augment the needed funds for garbage disposal.

The DPS said that the city generates an average daily garbage volume of 500 tons. This means for one month, the city generates approximately 15,000 tons of garbage.

At the rate the city pays to Jomara of P1,400 per ton, this means the city will need a budget of around P21 million for one month of hauling service alone.