Opposition Councilor Joel Garganera expressed doubt over the city government’s plans to purchase twenty-one new compactor trucks to aid the city’s garbage collection services.
In a statement sent to reporters, Garganera said he hinted a ‘redundancy’ on the services if they will push through with the purchase of new garbage trucks.
“The executive needs to decide if they want to outsource the garbage collection or do it themselves,” said Garganera.
“In my opinion, I would understand if they bought a few trucks to replace the fully depreciated ones. But to purchase these trucks in that huge amount, then I doubt that the executive is really putting the people’s money in the right place,” he added.
The Department of Public Service (DPS) is requesting the City Council to release P265-million worth of funds as their budget for garbage collection and disposal services.
This is lower compared to this year’s P286-million budget.
The city shelled out a total of P480 million for both the garbage collection services and rental of garbage trucks, which amounted to P133-million.
But for 2019, the total budget related to garbage collection is P497 million or P17 million higher than in 2019.
The proposed budget for the purchase of 21 compactor trucks is P232 million.