Council: Realign P40M for trash
Of the P121 million allotted for miscellaneous services in DPS’ budget for 2017, only P29 million remains. DPS Assistant Head John Paul Gelasque said that due to the increasing volume of garbage collected every day, the remaining budget allotted for the services of Jomara Konstruckt, which hauls the city’s garbage, is only good up to Tuesday next week.
To recall, the city government has set aside P75 million for the three-month contract of Jomara Konstruckt to haul city’s garbage. Jomara started serving the city last February. The budget is supposed to last until the end of this month. The 40 million DPS wanted realigned would be good for one month and 10 days
Before the council approved the request of DPS, however, its members spent close to an hour of discussion before making a decision.
Team Rama-affiliated Councilor Jose Daluz III wondered how the executive department would conduct a public bidding considering that April 25 is already very near, adding that the request has been brought to the council only last Tuesday during the session.
Gelasque, though, said in an interview public bidding would be observed and that the mayor is expected to sign today the purchase request, which would be sent to the Bids and Awards Committee.
He said there is a possibility that Jomara Konstruckt’s services would be extended until they can declare a winning bidder.
Based on procedure, conducting a public bidding would take at least one month for the Technical Working Group to evaluate the bids and the bidders.
As of press time, Bids and Awards Committee Head Ronaldo Malacora said the matter has not yet reached them.
In addition, Daluz argued realigning the amount is tantamount to the DPS abandoning the plan to rent heavy equipment since the P40 million would instead be used as payment for the garbage hauler.
“It seems like you don’t need the budget of the rental kay you are abandoning it…. Ikaw (Gelasque) ray niingon nga dili kasaligan ang uban natong equipment,” Daluz said.
Gelasque then answered that DPS is prioritizing the hauling of garbage since they cannot just leave the trash on the streets while waiting for the arrival of the heavy equipment.
He said the original plan was to ask for supplemental budget but there’s no discussion on the matter yet. City Councilor Jocelyn Pesquera, chairman of the committee on budget and finance, commented that it looked to her that DPS does not know on how to set is budget since it keeps on asking for additional funds.
“I want to put this on record that they don’t know on how to handle the garbage collection matter. This year they only proposed P22 million. But for we thought that there is really a need to address this (garbage problem), so we added P99 million to make it P121 million,” she said.
City Councilor Joel Garganera, chairman of the environment committee, said the department should have an appropriation for garbage collection for the whole year so that they would not use other funds for it.
Daluz said the present administration is spending more money compared to the previous administration on tipping fee, since the north barangays are only paying P700 per ton of garbage to a private landfill while for the south barangays, city is paying P1, 500 per ton.
Gelasque, however, said collected garbage this year has been increasing and DPS, during the previous administration, spent a lot of money for the repair of garbage trucks that conked out more often since the road leading to the private-owned landfill in Consolacion town was not good.
The City Council has scheduled an executive session on the matter this Tuesday to be clarified on the matter.
“We approved it already but we wanted to know more the details. Apparently, Mr. Gelasque couldn’t answer some of our questions and many more wanted to ask pa. We were just shocked at the amount the city is paying for the garbage,” said Councilor Raymond Alvin Garcia, who was the one who requested the executive session. (FREEMAN)
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