Will the city ever collect my garbage?

With the passing of Cebu Archbishop Emeritus Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, the Christian world had lost a venerable shepherd. He will no longer walk with us and feel his presence but the wise counsel he, as our spiritual beacon, left us will serve as our indelible guide on humble and virtuous living. And we all pray that the Lord our God will take him into His Heavenly Kingdom. God speed Cardinal, we love you.

True to the off tangent nature of this column, let me peel myself from our mourning over the death of our beloved cardinal and train my search light on the darkening environment that has wrapped the administration of His Honor, Cebu City Mayor Tomas R. Osmeña. Really, for a while I thought that our mayor was not incompetent. Despite his failed adventures in a foreign land where his family got exiled in the Martial Law years, he came back to our city, after EDSA I, seemingly eager to try new ideas of running a government. But his continued neglect to address the most basic of our concerns had led me to imagine that public welfare had ceased to be in his agenda.

Garbage collection, without doubt, should top the list of the basic services the city government is duty bound to give. We do not need PhD to know that it is interminably linked with health and sanitation. Common sense tells us that from uncollected trash spring all forms of ailments that will hound the citizenry.

Lest I would be accused of baseless generalization, I will only speak of my personal experience and refuse to ascribe it as also happening to many even if am sure that there are other souls with similar plaint. In the last few months of the 2013-2016 term of past Mayor Michael L. Rama, no garbage collector had picked up my refuse. When Rama got suspended as mayor, and the honorable Councilor Margarita V. Osmeña, assumed the reins of the city government, the service just stopped. The cessation was drastic as it was noticeable. My trash began to pile since garbage trucks would just pass by and the crews unable to see or smell its foul odor. I tried calling the office of the mayor a few times but I was always referred to the Department of Public Services. Protocol, I was told.

When I pay religiously and honestly my tax obligations to both the city and national governments, I consider myself a taxpayer. Theoretically, my entitlement to basic government services sets in and it is anchored on my paying taxes. At least, that is what I teach in my constitutional law classes although such teaching is just that, a teaching.

Dogma notwithstanding, I claim that the city administration of Mayor Osmeña, is negligent. It is not giving this particular service that I am entitled to and in return of the taxes I paid. For more than a year now, I have been deprived of a basic service. My initial calls to appropriate offices, including the mayor's, had not yielded any result. My few articles in this column did not elicit the kind of action responsible officials are supposed to do.

To remedy the situation, I kept bringing my garbage to a farm lot in the mountains where I had to cover the swill with soil. I fear that I will continue incurring this burdensome expense if the city neglects to provide me this service. Will I indeed have to suffer Mayor Osmeña's incompetence till his term expires in 2019?

There is a project of the mayor called "sardines for garbage" or words to that effect. I hope that our city chief executive accepts this observation that this project is a product of unintelligent thinking. Really, I do not want to believe that the mayor has sunk to this level of mediocrity. I do not want sardines mayor, but I want that my garbage be collected.