CEBU, Philippines — What appeared to be a controversial P220-million increase in the cost of a proposed waste processing project for Cebu City turned out to be a case of miscommunication after all.
During an executive session of the Cebu City Council yesterday, Suki Trading Corporation admitted that it had failed to inform Vice Mayor Tomas Osmeña that its original P250-million proposal had been revised to a P470-million package after additional equipment was incorporated into the project.
"I think that is one of the failures that we have because we failed to update the vice mayor," Engr. Ramon Destajo, marketing consultant of Suki Trading Corp., told councilors when asked why Osmeña was apparently unaware of the increased project cost.
The admission came after Councilor Joel Garganera, chairman of the Council's Committee on Environment, questioned the nearly doubled price tag and sought clarification on who had authorized the inclusion of additional equipment.
Destajo explained that the company's original proposal, submitted earlier this year, consisted of two pyrolysis machines costing P125 million each, for a total of P250 million. The proposal relied primarily on manual waste segregation.
However, after further evaluation, the company concluded that manual segregation would be inadequate to handle Cebu City's estimated 600 to 700 metric tons of garbage generated daily.
To address this concern, Suki Trading revised its proposal to include two automatic waste segregation machines worth P110 million each, adding P220 million to the project cost and bringing the total package to P470 million.
The upgraded package includes two pyrolysis machines, two automatic segregation units, auxiliary equipment, and a building to house the entire facility.
Destajo said the revised proposal was intended to provide a complete waste processing system capable of handling the city's garbage volume.
Under the proposed setup, waste would pass through conveyor systems, magnetic separators, and automated sorting equipment before recyclable materials, biodegradable waste, and residual waste were directed to separate processing streams.
Suki Trading President and Chief Executive Officer Victoriano Ocon said the facility could process between 600 and 700 metric tons of waste per day, with automatic segregation reducing the need for a large manual workforce.
He said the system would recover recyclable materials, process biodegradable waste through fermentation and composting, and send residual waste through pyrolysis technology.
Councilors nevertheless questioned why Osmeña, who had earlier visited one of the firm's facilities as part of a benchmarking activity, had been left out of discussions regarding the revised proposal.
Garganera also challenged Destajo's statement that the Mayor's Office had agreed to the additional equipment, noting that Mayor Nestor Archival had previously said he was unaware of the proposal and had not personally endorsed it.
Destajo clarified that the company had interpreted the mayor's endorsement of its letter to the City Council as an indication that the proposal could be discussed further. He acknowledged, however, that there had been no direct discussion with the mayor regarding the additional equipment.
For his part, Osmeña maintained that the P250-million segregation component might not be necessary, arguing that waste segregation should already be undertaken by barangays.
He also pointed out that Cebu City already has a segregation machine donated by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which he said could potentially be transferred to a future processing site.
The vice mayor also challenged portions of the company's presentation, particularly references to "waste-to-energy," noting that the proposal does not actually generate electricity.
Ocon later clarified that the "energy" referred only to heat recovered from the waste processing system and not to power generation.
Questions were also raised about Suki Trading's corporate capitalization after company officials disclosed that the firm had a capitalization of about P5 million despite proposing a project worth nearly half a billion pesos.
The company said the facility would come with a one-year warranty and have an estimated service life of 10 years.
It also offered to operate the facility during its initial years before eventually transferring operations to the city government. (CEBU NEWS)