The presence of a mountain of garbage at the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill transfer station is making Councilor Joel Garganera suspicious of the kind of service that City Hall is getting from its private hauler.
/CDN file photo
Garganera asks DPS to monitor Pamocor’s operation
Garbage at the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill transfer station continues to pile up, making Councilor Joel Garganera suspicious of the kind of service that is being rendered by its hauler Pasajero Motors Corporation (Pamocor).
When he visited the landfill on Thursday morning, Garganera said the pile of garbage at the transfer station was about 8 to 10 meters high.
“I’m doubting (if) the garbage being dumped in Consolacion, if that’s really from Cebu City. Are we sure that it’s the city’s garbage being dumped there? Wala man nahubas (This doesn’t seem to lessen). It’s (garbage at the transfer station) getting higher,” he said.
Garganera said that if garbage was indeed hauled from the landfill’s transfer station, its volume should have already reduced by now.
The former head of the City Council’s environment committee said he plans to see his lawyers and seek advise on what needs to be done on the matter.
“I am consulting my lawyers. I may file a case against the city on this. They tolerated this practice. It’s grossly advantageous to the city,” Garganera said.
City Hall is paying Pamocor P1,327 per ton of garbage hauled from the Inayawan transfer station and disposed in a private landfill in Consolacion.
Pamocor won a P26.8-million garbage-hauling contract that is valid for the entire month of August.
They charged P1,333 per ton of garbage hauled when they first won a P40-million contract from City Hall in June.
Pamocor’s billing
Garganera questioned the existing practice of allowing Pamocor to submit a waste manifest and billing that would state the volume of garbage that they hauled from the transfer station.
The manifest serves as basis in computing their service charge to City Hall, he said.
From June 16 to July 15, Pamocor billed the city for the hauling of an average of 118 tons to 1,095 tons of garbage per day.
Garganera said that in order to protect the city from abuse, DPS should be the one to weight garbage brought out of the transfer station for disposal at the Consolacion landfill.
He also lamented City Hall’s lack of data on the actual volume of garbage brought into the transfer station daily.
DPS head Roberto Cabarrubias said the city government only pays for the actual volume of garbage that Pamocor hauls from the landfill transfer station.
But he admitted that they do not keep their own garbage volume records.
Cabarrubias said they depend on the waste manifest issued by the Consolacion landfill operator, which Pamocor also uses as basis in computing their billing to City Hall.
But he assured Garganera that they are looking for means to verify the billing submitted to the city.
Weighing station
Cabarrubias said they would include a requirement for the private hauler to also operate a weighing station at the Inayawan transfer station the next time that they would call for bidding on the city’s hauling services for the month of September.
But he warned that this would mean an added cost to the city.
“It will be an additional burden to the service provider. A weighing station charges around P180 per truck as cost for weighing,” he told Cebu Daily News.
An option, Cabarrubias said, is to assign a DPS personnel at the Consolacion landfill facility to help monitor the volume of garbage being brought into the area.
On Thursday afternoon, Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) members held a pre-bidding conference for the P150-million garbage contract that will take care of the city’s hauling needs from September to December.