Lack of garbage trucks leaves trash uncollected in some parts of city

FOR over a week now, garbage in several Cebu City barangays has not been collected due to the shortage of garbage trucks, resulting in complaints from residents and establishment owners.

Affected areas are densely populated barangays like Capitol Site, Apas, Lahug, Guadalupe, Tejero and the vicinity of Taboan and Carbon markets, said Department of Public Services (DPS) assistant head Randy Navarro.

The garbage situation prompted Mayor Michael Rama to call for a meeting last Monday night to come up with an action plan to keep the city clean, especially during Sinulog week.

Navarro said their operations are hampered by the shortage of garbage trucks, since City Hall’s supplier of the five rented trucks stopped providing the service last Dec. 20.

The DPS has 21 garbage trucks but only 11 to 14 are in running condition to serve 53 urban barangays.

UNCOLLECTED. Piles of garbage, like this one under a flyover at the Capitol Site area, have been uncollected for more than a week now. Of the city’s 21 garbage trucks, only 11 to 14 are in good condition. (Photo by Amper Campaña)

DPS Chief Dionisio Gualisa said the City already bought seven brand new compactor trucks but these have yet to be delivered.

While waiting for the units, the DPS will rent garbage trucks but they still have to wait for their budget to be released, he said.

“The mayor also received complaints about uncollected garbage. we acted on it already.

What’s crucial now is the collection of garbage next week, because that’s already the Sinulog week and we expect a huge volume of garbage. The mayor wants to see to it that the entire city is clean,” Gualisa told Sun.Star Cebu.

The DPS chief instructed all garbage truck drivers and garbage collectors not to be absent from work and to collect the garbage on time.

“We also asked the barangay captains to make sure that their own garbage trucks are serviceable to ensure unhampered operations next week,” he added.

He lamented that there are some truck drivers who don’t maximize the use of their trucks and would limit garbage collection in selected areas in the barangay.

Sun.Star Cebu learned that the garbage in a mall and residences in Barangay Capitol Site have not been collected since last week.

Navarro said they also received the same complaints, and assured they are doing their best to collect garbage dumped on the side of the road, especially in the city’s main thoroughfares.

“Please bear with us because we don’t have enough trucks and some of our trucks are not in good condition. For now, we will prioritize the main thoroughfares but we will try to cover all areas,” he said in a separate interview.

Aside from having just a few trucks, Navarro said that those in running condition are small ones with a limited capacity of 1.8 to two tons of garbage.

The trucks collect garbage in the barangays and deliver the garbage to the dump site in Consolacion town, and can only manage to make two trips a day because of the distance and the traffic.

Navarro is optimistic that garbage collection will be more efficient when the seven compactor trucks are delivered because each truck has a capacity of three to four tons each.