Condition of garbage trucks rented by City raised
Police records, however, show an improvement in Talisay City Police’s performance against criminality
The Cebu City Government is renting 21 garbage trucks from the Pasajero Motors Corp. (Pamocor) for three months. One truck costs the City P504,000 a month or P16,800 per day.
If the City is spending that much on garbage trucks, the vehicles better be in good condition and be brand new. Instead the trucks have only been repainted and their interior frayed and in poor condition. This is what councilors belonging to Team Rama are alleging as Councilor Joel Garganera shows photos of the exterior and interior of the Pamocor trucks.
But Mayor Tomas Osmeña says the contract does not require Pamocor to supply the City with brand new trucks. If the trucks are running to collect garbage, that’s fine. The City will not pay for trucks that break.
The Team Rama councilors suggest that the City buy its own garbage trucks since it is spending an amount every month that can alreay buy a brand new truck. The problem was garbage collection and now it’s the garbage trucks.
An official of the Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO) warned the 73 personnel of Talisay City Police Station that they will be relieved and sent for retraining if they cannot decrease the crime incidents in the city.
Supt. Ryan Manongdo, CPPO deputy director for operations, said the personnel are given two weeks to accomplish the task.
The Talisay City police chief, Supt. Jason Villamater, is exempted from the warning as he is new in the police station. Villamater replaced Supt. Emerson Dante last month.
Manongdo released yesterday to reporters the statistics on theft and robbery. It showed an improvement from last year.
From January to September this year, police recorded 71 robbery incidents, or 35 fewer than that of the same period last year.
Police noted 110 theft incidents in the past nine months, a drop of 103 cases from 213 incidents in the January-September 2016 period.
But even if he is not included in the warning, Villamater, Talisay City police chief, said he accepts the challenge of CPPO officials to improve his city’s peace and order situation within two weeks.
Villamater told SunStar Cebu that it was only natural for theft and robbery cases in the city to increase especially from September to December.
But he said they will do everything to address the problem.
“We are beefing up all measures to prevent criminality in Talisay. (This is) The first thing I mentioned to my personnel here because even before I came here I was already informed of the ‘bad image of Talisay,’” Villamater said.
He also disagreed that his personnel were slacking off.
“I beg to disagree. I have witnessed them work,” Villamater said.