Mountains of trash still remain in Inayawan

Scavengers search for anything that can be sold inside the private transfer station in Inayawan in this January 25, 2017 file photo.

Cebu City Hall’s private garbage hauler may change, but the mountains of trash inside the private transfer station in Barangay Inayawan still remain.
Some Barug Team Rama councilors called a press conference and brought up the problem again yesterday.

Councilor Joel Garganera, who used to head the Cebu City Council’s committee on environment, said he again visited the transfer station last Wednesday and still saw the mountains of garbage that even went higher than the facility’s fence. He showed reporters photos of the area.

“It just goes to show that our service provider was performing poorly. It was also not observed that trash in a transfer station should only stay for 24 hours,” said Councilor Jose Daluz III.

Pasajero Motors Corp. (Pamocor) has been the city’s private garbage hauler for the past month for P26-million purchase order (PO) from the city.

However, a different service provider is set to takeover this September as Jomara Konstruct Corp. won the latest bidding for the P124-million garbage-hauling contract from September to December this year.

Daluz also raised concern on the terms of reference for the city’s garbage-hauling contract as the private hauler is only tasked to haul a certain number of tons of garbage to a private landfill in Consolacion regardless of how long it will take them.

Daluz suggested that the city should also impose a certain timeframe for the service provider to be able to comply with hauling the needed number of tons of garbage so that their performance will be properly monitored. He said he hopes the executive department will consider this in their next bidding.

Sought for comment, Department of Public Services (DPS) head Roberto Cabarrubias admitted that there are still a lot of garbage in the transfer station due to the backlog last June wherein the city had no hauler for a couple of days due to delays on the processing of their documents.

“But until now, Pamocor is still hauling this remaining garbage. Their current purchase order for P26 million is expected to end by the first week of September yet,” he told Cebu Daily News.

He said they hope that the backlog of garbage in the transfer station will at least be reduced.

Meanwhile, Cabarrubias explained that the incoming new service provider Jomara will also have to haul some of the remaining garbage in the transfer station, apart from the fresh ones that will be dumped there.

“Our target is ma-zero garbage na ang (there will be no more garbage inside the) transfer station,” he said.

Cabarrubias also said that they are still ironing out some documents with Jomara for the P124-million contract.

He said they expect the notice of award to already be issued by the city to Jomara within the week.

He added that if the P124-million budget will be used up and there are still remaining garbage, the DPS will have to request for another budget from the City Council.

Mayor Tomas Osmeña earlier said he plans to apply for a P40-million loan to fund the garbage hauling of the city if the need arises.

He pointed out that the city is not playing favorites in choosing a service provider as evidenced by the change in private haulers in different biddings.

The mayor said he wants to do the loan because he does not want to use part of the city’s revenue from the sale of the lots of the South Road Properties (SRP) last year which he considers as an “illegal sale.”

But Councilor Daluz said the city should not resort to doing a loan since there will be interests and other fees. He added that the city has enough money that could reach P40 million for the mayor’s plan.