At no cost to the city

DON’T we all love freebies?

Some people go to the extent of tagging along with strangers promising freebies only to be ripped off their credit cards or contents of their ATM accounts.

The city loves freebies as well.

Does this line sound familiar, “At no cost to the city”?

The multimillion Environmental Recycling System machines, the Light Emitting Diode project to replace the city’s old lights, the waste to energy technology, all these have the ‘at no cost to the city’ catch phrase in their proposals.

This provision has not worked out well with ProTech Machineries, systems provider of the ERS. ‘At no cost to the city’ proved to be to the contrary when the City Council realigned portions of the different city departments’ budget to haul garbage out. Something ProTech promised to do ‘at no cost to the city.’

Believe me, you, this won’t be the end of it.

JM Agreda, my ‘bunso’, decided to look up Dominion Clean Energy on the internet before doing a story on the decision of the city government contracting the company for its waste to energy technology.

Imagine his dismay when he couldn’t find its homepage. “Anong klaseng kumpanya ‘to, ate, wala man lang website?” JM wanted to know past and current projects of Dominion.

My search led me to a column in the Washington Post by a certain Ivy Main. It discussed Dominion Power allegedly ripping off customers of clean energy in Virginia, USA.

I pray to God it is not one and the same company. We do not need it at this time when our garbage [problems] are mounting (forgive the pun).

We cannot be so naïve and allow ourselves to get into deals without a background check on the companies we transact with.

Because by the time it will be too late the officials’ only option could be to acquire a hair-pulling machine. I hope they find one to do this job ‘at no cost to the city.’

Until of course they realize our hands could easily do the same job for free. But here’s a fair warning to our officials: be careful of the people rearing to take pleasure of pulling your hair out first.