City Hall vows to improve garbage collection
Hospital garbage piled up behind the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) is so bad medical staff and passersby wear face masks.
“Dili na jud madala. Baho kaayo unya hasol kaayo mag suot ani (face mask) (I can’t bear it anymore. It stinks so bad and wearing a face mask is a hassle),” said 23-year-old John Villegas of barangay
Labangon, as he stood outside the hospital’s Ward 10 building across the trash segregation site.
Garbage is sorted using a a color-coding scheme.
Yellow is for infectious, medical and pathological waste; green is for biodegradable waste and black is for non-biodegradable waste.
Cebu City Hall’s Government Services Office (GSO) promised yesterday to improve garbage collection starting next week.
Engr. Rolando Ardosa, GSO chief, said he made arrangements with the Asian Energy Systems Corp which operates the landfill in Pulog, Consolacion to allow City Hall to bring garbage there the whole day, instead of the usual schedule of 5 a.m. to 12 midnight only.
The city has 10 additional compactor trucks from Yokohama, Japan for the task.
“By Monday, hopefully, our garbage collection will be back to normal,” Ardosa said.
Dr. Joseph Alesna, chief of the VSMMC’s Office of Special Concerns, said the hospital strictly implements waste segregation
“From the beginning, wastes are segregated. Segregated waste goes to specific collection units towards collection storage at the end of the process,¨ Alesna said in a statement.
He said the hospital’s executive committee is aware of the problem which recurs every now and then because there were factors “beyond their control”. VSMMC produced 1 to 2 tons of trash a day.
The Department of Public Services (DPS) is in charge of collecting general wastes while a private contractor, the Pollution Abatement System Specialist Inc. (PASSI), handles infectious, medical and pathological wastes of the hospital.
Councilor Gerardo Carillo lamented the “crisis” in garbage collection in city streets during last Wednesday’s City Council session.
Cebu City needs to dispose of about 400 tons of garbage daily.
Cebu Daily News spotted a DPS dump truck loaded with segregated garbage near the hospital./ With Correspondent Edison delos Angeles
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