Review sought on garbage collection fees

With higher garbage collection fee rates, businesses will be forced to observe waste segregation that started at the Inayawan landfill site back in April 2011 before it was closed early this year.

Further study and consultations should be made by Cebu City Hall before it decides to raise  garbage fees for collecting trash  from commercial establishments.

Councilor Nida Cabrera said this after the Solid Waste Management Board (SWMB) called for a review and amendment of City Ordinance 1361 which sets a system of garbage collection fees for the city.

“I started drafting an FGD (focus group discussion) with businesses since they will be affected if the ordinance is amended. They think that the city is singling them out so we have to make them understand,” Cabrera said.

She said the city should first focus on helping  barangays adopt to the new system of collection and dumping garbage after the closure of the Inayawan sanitary landfill  in Jan. 15.

Worse
SWMB chairman Jade Ponce has called for the revision and amendment of the ordinance that was passed in 1990.

He said the fees set in the ordinance were  “woefully inadequate, obsolete and no longer responsive.”

“It cost the city much, much more than it collects in managing solid waste generated by its citizens. The situation is made worse by the refusal or failure of people and establishments in strictly adhering to the waste segregation policy,” Ponce said in a statement.

Currently, the city pays a tipping fee of P700 per ton at a private landfill in Consolacion.

This doesn’t include the cost of fuel, mechanical parts, maintenance and service upkeep of each garbage truck as well as the manpower and man hours expended to collect and dispose of the waste generated daily.

Ponce cited as an example a university with a student population of 20,000 or more.

He said the university is only billed P800 a year as garbage fees or roughly P2.19 a day.

“One of the most prolific generators of waste are fast food chains, snack bars, coffee shops and restaurants which are billed annually, depending on floor area, from P500 to P2,500 a year only,” he said.

Daily newspapers, radio stations and TV station are paying  P200 to P300 a year while  hospitals are billed a maximum  of P500 a year.

“There is an immediate need for the City Council to revisit the 24-year-old ordinance”he said and make it more attunded to present economic realities.

Ponce said the fee rate system should be based on the type and quantity or volume of garbage generated rather than the nature of the business or activity or floor area occupied by the business.

“In other words, “You Generate More, You Pay More.” This way people will be forced to segregate and comply with the 3 R’s of solid waste management: reduce, reuse and recycle,” Ponce told reporters.