Renting garbage trucks
Iheard this Cebuano phrase when I was a teenager listening to radio commentary programs that were popular at the back end of Ferdinand Marcos’s martial law regime: “gigisal sa kaugalingong mantika.” I think it is closer to the English idiom, “having your cake and eating it too.” I don’t know, though, which of the two phrases best describe the Cebu City Government renting garbage trucks from Pasajero Motors Corp. (Pamocor) at P700 an hour per truck.
I would leave it to the lawyers to look into the legal aspects of the deal. Pamocor, as pointed out by opposition councilor Raymond Garcia, is owned by Franklin Ong, a barangay captain who is allied with the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK). Bids and Awards Committee chairman Ronald Malacora corrected that by saying that Pamocor is a corporation and Ong is not its sole owner--as if that matters.
I would like to focus instead on the cost and the arrangement. City Councilor Joel Garganera recently posted on Facebook a photo of the garbage trucks parked at the City Hall grounds with the reminder that, “as they park we are paying them P700 an hour” plus this additional info: “16,800 per unit a day, gasoline and loaders absorbed by the City.” I haven’t seen the contract, but is the rent like what we Cebuanos call “koridas” for the entire day--meaning we are paying them even if they are parked?
I say we should go beyond the mayor’s promise that the City’s garbage collection will already improve, a claim that is obviously a marketing ploy so the public would accept the deal. If we say P700 per hour per unit, my understanding is that the hourly count would be when the unit is “actually” used to collect garbage. Will the Department of Public Services (DPS) have a time card for the purpose and will it be able to monitor if the driver is not whiling away his time somewhere?
In the years of observing Osmeña since I was assigned to cover the City Hall beat in the early ‘90s, I have known him to be the quintessential marketing man. He can, to use an old saying, sell ice to Eskimos. The past months he has been peddling the benefits of renting garbage trucks rather than buying them. Considering the cost of renting those garbage trucks from Pamocor, aren’t the Cebuanos the Eskimos who bought ice from the mayor?
Which brings me back to my belief that we need a new generation of leaders to run our local government units, leaders who are creative in dealing with problems in governance because they are new and not locked up in the box of traditional politics. Consider Osmeña. At least in solid waste management, he has not exhibited new thinking and has been doing the same things over and over. Didn’t the great Albert Einstein already tell us this when he defined insanity: doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results? That’s why garbage collection here still stinks.
Besides, Osmeña and most of our politicians are no longer leaders in the strictest sense of the word. Be observant and scrutinize each of the mayor’s moves in the past months and you’ll see politics and preparations for the 2019 elections written all over them. You can start with this Pamocor deal.