Garbage collection improving: Tomas

Although he admits there were setbacks during the first few days of operation of the 21 rented garbage trucks, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña said garbage collection has shown signs of improvement.

Osmeña said that in the first few days, some trucks broke down and coordination was lacking. He called the setbacks “growing pains”.

“We just started and so far, our monitoring systems show that we are finally able to keep up with the garbage. Let the people judge,” he said.

Pasajero Motors Corp. is the provider of the trucks rented by the City Government for three months to solve the garbage problem.

The City spends P504,000 rental per month or P16,800 per day. Since the City has leased 21 trucks, rental of this trucks will cost P10,584,000 for this month alone.

In an earlier report, opposition councilors have asked the executive department and the concerned offices to strictly monitor the performance of the leased trucks, after some of them were reportedly seemed to be no longer in good condition.

Councilor Edu Rama suggest- ed that it will be better to outsource for maintenance of Cityowned trucks.

He said it would be better if City Hall buys new trucks.

Osmeña has since clarified that the private service provider was not required to provide the City with brand new trucks as long its running and its serving the City 24 hours.

He also stood pat that by leasing trucks, City can actually save more since all repair and maintenance work, and payment for drivers will be handled by the service provider.

“What were doing here, we will fire many mechanics, many drivers, clerks all these vouchers they’re signing. Were trying to trim down this area so you cut down on the paperwork, use them to collect taxes, instead of doing all these feedback and paperwork, under deliveries, substitute deliveries,” Osmeña said.

“You see P300 (example salary of driver and loader) and P1,000 to buy one spare part... that costs money. You don’t see that in the budget. We don’t have to deal with that anymore. First, we will collect garbage and we are accomplishing that. After that, well try to to cut down our cost little by little,” he said.