Saturday, March 15, 2008 City council okays P4.5M for dump trucks' rental By Karl G. Ombion
TO AUGMENT the need of the city for more dump trucks to haul 250 to 300 tons per day of garbage, the Bacolod City Council passed on Wednesday a resolution for the immediate appropriation of P4.5 million supplemental budget for the rental of five dump trucks for at least three months.
Bacolod councilor Greg Gasataya said Thursday, "That in as much as the city government wanted to purchase more dump trucks it cannot do much for now because of the on-going investigation on suspended dump truck deal. Instead, we resorted to renting few dump trucks.
"The city government has only 22 dump trucks and they are not enough to haul all the 250 to 300 tons of garbage everyday; with five dump trucks more we can make additional 15 trips each or a total of 75 trips a day, equivalent to a hundred or more tons," Gasataya said.
Gasataya clarified however that the P4.5 million is not only for rental of five dump trucks, but will cover also crude consumption, repairs of the existing damaged trucks, and the purchase of several waste disposal related equipments like microphones for dump trucks, garbage bins, safety gears of workers, material recovery facility, communication equipment, among others.
The budget, he said, will also include the expenses for the clean and green contest among the city's 61 barangays slated on the 2nd quarter of the year.
Gasataya added that the Council will soon process the preparations for the bidding of the dump truck rental and purchases in order to ensure the transparency of the project.
Some sectors had raised concerns over the Council's supplemental budget in view of the controversial bidding of the 10 dump trucks which forced the mayor to suspend the deal and conduct investigation, saying that it could again end in another controversy.
