Off the cuff, the urgency of Cebu City Council’s 15-day deadline for the Executive Department’s long-term plan to solve the City’s solid waste problem is very welcome. On reflection, however, its unrealism and illogic are disheartening.
Councilors should know by now that Mayor Archival is micro-managing Cebu City. Management is generally defined as the art of accomplishing things through others. An effective manager is one who delegates to subordinates he trusts are capable of getting the job done. As the mayor has since demonstrated, delegation is not in his repertoire.
I’m also sure that at least half the councilors share the vice mayor’s opinion that the city administrator is not up to his administrative tasks. Hence, when the council demands that the Executive Department produce a plan to solve the city’s solid waste disposal problem, it is the mayor they are in effect asking. Not the city administrator, not a solid waste management department that does not exist. With nobody to delegate to, Mayor Archival can only come up with a plan that he can implement by himself. I can’t even begin to think how inadequate that plan would be.
By the logic of the above premises, what the City Council needs to do is to sponsor and approve an ordinance creating the City’s Solid Waste Management Department. This department will be charged with coming up with short and long-term plans, and implement them, to solve the City’s solid waste problem. Its mission is to manage the mountain of waste the city generates and spends too much for its disposal.
There is just no way city officials can gainsay Cebu City’s urgent need for a fully staffed Solid Waste Management Department, complete with an adequate budget and headed by a department head the mayor trusts has the capacity to do the job well. The mayor has to learn to delegate or get burned out before he accomplishes anything.
Apropos to that, some of us see the urgency of this ordinance and are not leaving it to the vagaries of politics that are causing havoc to the City’s performance of its administrative responsibilities. As this essay goes to print, we are drafting, by way of a suggestion, a full-blown ordinance that will create Cebu City’s Solid Waste Management Department.
Essentially, the department’s task is to minimize what goes to a landfill by segregating and selling all re-usable and recyclable materials and the fertilizers produced from organic waste. This system would not only reduce the cost of disposal but explore the opportunity to generate income through proper segregation and sale of reusables, recyclables and organic fertilizers, thus considerably reducing what has to go to a landfill.
Finally, the problem cannot be solved with the usual transactional approach of politicians. Councilors should go beyond party loyalties and just focus on reducing the tons of trash that threaten the physical and financial health of the City. A quid pro quo approach will blindside them to the opportunity behind the problem, an opportunity that only an efficient waste management system run by a fully staffed and adequately budgeted Solid Waste Management Department can tap.