Tomas slammed over costly garbage hauling

CEBU, Philippines — For Councilor Joel Garganera, the Cebu City government's plan to contract the services of a private landfill instead of hiring private garbage haulers is a case of "too late the hero."

Garganera, chairman of the City Council’s committee on environment, slammed the administration of Mayor Tomas Osmeña for spending over a billion pesos for the contracted garbage hauling program with a private firm.

“The city could have saved millions of pesos if it directly contracted a landfill. We are spending millions of pesos more than paying for the private landfill facility in Consolacion town. But the mayor is trying to be consistent that when you dump your garbage directly in Consolacion, it’s illegal,” he said.

“What was being practiced before was the most logical, the most practical and less costly scheme,” he added.

The city government hired a contractor to haul the city’s generated trash since the controversial Inayawan landfill was shutdown on December 15, 2016.

The city spent P300.4 million for hauling operations from 2016 to 2017 and P420 million more last year. This year, the city has set aside P692 million, including the procurement of 21 new garbage trucks amounting to P232 million.

Garganera said the city would have only spent P700 per ton of garbage if thrown directly into the dumping site.

Osmeña, in a separate interview, said contracting a landfill was the recommendation of the Asian Development Bank consultants.

 “It’s subject to recommendation of the ADB consultants. Problem with Garganera is he thinks that we are like Team Suyop that gets into anomalous contracts,” he told The FREEMAN.

Osmeña said transacting a business with a private landfill will be through a public bidding or Swiss challenge, a mode of procurement wherein the offer of the original proponent is subject to a challenge by another supplier.

Garganera said the mayor does not want to make a transaction with the private landfill in Consolacion due to the “anomalous” contract entered into by the previous administration.

But he said the executive department is eyeing at a private landfill in Binaliw, an upland Cebu City barangay, which the opposition camp found to be irregular also.

Garganera said the contractor of the Binaliw landfill began the ongoing construction even without the Environmental Compliance Certificate and other pertinent permits from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

He said the Osmeña administration was not transparent about this.

“The mayor’s allies pushed for the immediate approval of the Binaliw landfill project while hiding the truth. There should be transparency,” he said.

The measure approving the special use application for the central material facility and Binaliw landfill was among the approved measures on August 8 last year. — KBQ (FREEMAN)