Ricky Poca
The planned revamp of the Cebu City Council’s committees by the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) that was thwarted by Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella joining the fray resulted in a status quo that won’t sit well with Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña for long.
In fact, Labella’s insistence on redefining the council majority as 10 votes had ticked off Osmeña enough for him to threaten legal action against the vice mayor.
It may be easy to file a case, but winning a case is another. Labella and Barug Team Rama cited a previous Supreme Court case and a legal opinion of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) as legal basis for their position.
This wasn’t the first time the council figured in a stalemate. Back when they were the majority, the BO-PK bloc held hostage a proposed important legislative matter despite the pleas of some members of Barug Team Rama.
Now, Barug Team Rama is practically giving the BO-PK a dose of its own medicine. The moral of the story is simple: don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you.
The mayor should stop the practice of threatening his opponents with cases because it would not work. He is looking to pick a fight against councilors who happen to be lawyers.
By the way, the Osmeña administration is proposing a P400-million budget for garbage collection that is four times higher than the P120 million a year asked by the previous administration.
It is difficult to understand why the present administration quadrupled the budget for garbage collection even if there wasn’t any increase in garbage collected today.
The mayor’s refusal to dump the city’s garbage in the Consolacion landfill despite the reasonable P700 per ton tipping fee is baffling notwithstanding his unproven claim that the transaction entered into between the previous Rama administration and the Consolacion landfill operator was anomalous since there was no contract signed.
It would be a waste of the people’s money to collect garbage from the north district and transfer it to a station in the south district since it is more expensive than dumping it directly to the Consolacion dumpsite.
The Osmeña administration’s insistence of this arrangement is devoid of logic and is a wanton waste of the hard-earned money of the people.
And I share the observations of some people that the city government’s garbage collection is unsatisfactory and that it didn’t make the city streets and roads look less dirty to the average city resident.
I just hope that the city government stops blaming anyone for its inefficient garbage collection and just focus on improving their efforts for the sake of its constituents.
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