THE barangays in Cebu City can now focus on collecting waste in interior areas.
Leave the job of hauling garbage from business establishments to the City, said Joel Biton, head of the Department of Public Services (DPS).
This move would happen after the P25.2 million contract for the City’s garbage collection and disposal program was won by Jomara Konstruct Corp.
The private firm was declared winner after its lowest bid of P1,400 per ton of waste was not challenged by other bidders.
The contract covers the months of September and October. It will be finalized within the week, said Biton.
Biton said the latest deal with Jomara Konstruct is the third instance that the City extended its contract with the private firm.
Jomara’s last contract with the City expired on June 30, 2019.
The first extension was worth P32 million; the second was P12 million.
Biton said the DPS will not get the payment for the contract from its P190 million budget, which was appropriated to the DPS after the City Council approved the first supplemental budget submitted by the office of Mayor Edgardo Labella.
The DPS, he said, still has enough funds to fulfill the yet-to-be-signed contract with Jomara.
Biton said he recently met with around 200 establishment owners; he informed them on the City’s new garbage collection program.
He told them that the new schedules of garbage collection will be at 3 p.m.-11 p.m. and at 12 a.m.-8 a.m. Prior to these changes, the DPS used to collect waste from 12 a.m. until 8 a.m., and 4 p.m. until 12 a.m.
A task force has been formed to take charge of collecting waste from different business establishments.
In an earlier report, Banilad Barangay Captain Dennes Tabar said his personnel were the ones who hauled garbage from private business firms and not the City’s DPS.
After the second contract of Jomara expired last June, the City initiated the collection of waste; it used more than 20 trucks—14 are owned by the DPS; five 10-wheeler trucks of the Cebu City Engineering Office and four dump trucks of private contractors.
The barangays that have garbage trucks also helped in the garbage collection. JJL