TO ease the problem of waste disposal, four barangays in Cebu City’s south district will pilot test a scheme to cluster the collection of garbage starting Monday.
“We will pilot test four barangays that would be pooling resources like garbage trucks, even drivers and loaders,” said Phillip Zafra, president of the Association of Barangay Councils and chairman of barangay Tisa.
All trucks will be used to collect garbage in a single barangay for four days. For the rest of the week, the trucks will service their own barangays.
The four barangays and their schedule are: Quiot (Monday), Tisa (Wednesday), Poblacion-Pardo (Friday), and Basak-Pardo (Sunday).
“At least for one day in a week, we can maximize collection, dispatch and dumping of garbage in a barangays. The more trucks collecting, the more sitios and community will be reached,” said Zafra.
“We will do this for the meantime, pending negotiations with the Talisay landfill.”
If the scheme is effective, it will be repeated in other barangays.
The Cebu City government earlier announced a plan to rent five 10-wheeler trucks for 30 days to help south district barangays. Within the period, the barangays have to repair their defective garbage trucks.
Zafra said the ABC is looking for a site to use as a depot where trucks can be cleaned and maintained regularly.
Barangay captains have been clamoring for City Hall to buy them garbage trucks. Zafra said barangays can set aside part of the P10 million financial aid they will be receiving from the city government this year for this need.
“One truck is not enough to carry all our garbage. It’s a big problem so we have to be patient and find a way,” said Buhisan barangay captain Gremar Barete whose village has only one truck.
With more city barangays transporting their trash to Consolacion landfill, long lines of trucks form outside the facility.
When the Inayawan landfill was still open, only barangays from the north district of Cebu city transported their trash to Consolacion. After the closure in Jan. 15, south district barangay go there as well.
Barangay Capitol Site has seven garbage trucks but only three are working.
“We can’t cope up because the dumping area is far and we have to line up. There is no uncollected garbage in our barangay but sometimes we are delayed in collecting,” said Capitol Site barangay captain Manuel Guanzon.
In barangay Inayawan, officials said they are still adjusting to the closure of the landfill in their village.
Barangay Captain Lotlot Ignacio-Soon said Inayawan has only one serviceable truck that can make only one trip daily to Consolacion due to the traffic congestion of dumping trucks.
Soon said they will try a new house-to-house collection scheme in their barangay.
“We will have our eco-aides collect segregated waste from the households. We are targeting to have only residual wastes collected by our garbage trucks,” she said.