BAGUIO CITY – The city government will be purchasing additional 7 dump trucks that will be utilized to continuously improve the collection of the generated waste in the city’s barangays.
Romeo D. Concio, city general services officer, said the local government has made available a total of P30 million primarily earmarked for the purchase of the additional garbage trucks to allow the city to slowly retire several old and dilapidated trucks used in the daily collection of garbage around the city.
“We are finalizing the specifications of the trucks that would be able to hurdle our mountainous terrain so that it would be able to serve their prescribed economic life,” Concio stressed.
In 2013, the city government bought 4 additional brand new dump trucks that are now being used to augment the city’s fleet of garbage trucks in the effective collection of garbage all over the city.
It was learned that the city government the 4 brand new dump trucks at P3.95 million each but a supplier is offering the city the 7 dump trucks at P3.85 million each with a much lower specifications.
However, Concio argued the city government can no longer lower the specifications of the desired dump trucks to be purchased with the additional budget because auditors might question the local government why it bought a lower quality vehicle when there are better quality vehicles available in the market with better price offers.
He said the city government will bid out the purchase of the 7 additional dump trucks to allow more interested companies with better quality trucks to make their offers that would be advantageous to the city government so that it will be able to significantly improve its garbage collection on the ground.
The city government has a total of 20 garbage trucks but only 16 trucks are being utilized for the daily collection of garbage in the city’s 128 barangays on a prescribed schedule that was widely disseminated for the guidance of local residents.
The city general services officer appealed to local residents to continue practicing segregation of waste at source because the unsegregated garbage dumped in the pickup points will not be collected by the garbage trucks once it will be discovered that the garbage have not been segregated.
Concio expressed his gratitude to the barangay officials for their active role in making sure that the garbage from the households have been segregated by the households prior to being dumped in the pickup points in the different barangays.
According to him, aside from the segregation of waste at source, the generated biodegradable waste will be fed to the city’s two Environmental Recycling System (ERS) machines for its conversion into high grade compost fertilizer while the non-biodegradable waste are being taken by the segregators and the residual waste are the one that are being hauled out by the city to the engineered sanitary landfill in Capas, Tarlac.
By Dexter A. See
