For rentals of heavy equipment: Council allows use of P21.1M savings

CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu City Council has authorized the Department of Public Services to use P21.1 million savings under its miscellaneous service for garbage collection account to extend the rental contract with Pasajero Motors Corporation for another two months.

Councilor Eugenio Gabuya Jr., chairman of the committee on public services, said the funds will cover the rental expenses for the months of July and August. Gabuya said the city’s contract with Pamocor for the heavy equipment used in garbage hauling operation will end this month.

According to Gabuya, there are 21 heavy equipment currently rented by the city government at P678 each per hour from Pamocor for its garbage hauling operation. These include 11 dump trucks and 10 compactor trucks. The P21.1 million was allegedly the savings of DPS from the months of January to April.

The approval of Gabuya’s resolution, however, did not happen without question from the members of the opposition. Councilor Jose Daluz III questioned the declaration of savings at this early.

“It’s too early for me to declare savings now, especially on garbage. We experienced a lot of time in the previous years that we have always asked for supplemental budget when it comes to garbage because we cannot really fix the budget of garbage,” Daluz said.

Daluz said he is worried that DPS might experience another shortage in the budget for garbage hauling operation. He eventually yielded to Gabuya after the latter assured that the DPS will have enough budget for the rest of the year.

Gabuya said the P300 million annual budget for hauling operation would be enough considering that the city government has started implementing the “No Segregation, No Collection” policy.

He said the Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office is strictly enforcing the segregation policy that has significantly reduced the volume of garage every day. Based on the data presented by Gabuya, the segregation policy has brought the volume of garbage collected daily from 650 tons to 530 tons or a decrease of 120 tons.

“We are aggressive in our segregation, that’s one of the considerations of the decrease of trash collected,” he said. (FREEMAN)