Privatization of collection, hauling of garbage proposed

October 19, 2020 Metro BLISTT

BAGUIO CITY October 14 – The City Council, during last Monday’s regular session, requested the concerned offices of the local government to conduct a feasibility study for the privatization of the one-time collection of the city’s garbage from source to landfill.
In a resolution, local legislators stated that if the aforesaid feasibility study is favorable to the city, the terms of reference to be prepared by the City General Services Office or the City Mayor’s Office, the same shall be subject to approval by the local legislative body and after the required public bidding, such contract should be confirmed by the same body.
The council said that the issue of effectively and efficiently addressing garbage collection and disposal can be considered as a matter of urgency, thus, the need for the conduct of a feasibility study as to its soundness and practicability to consider reduced cost, efficiency as the city’s garbage hauler, trucks are only few, old and dilapidated, security of employment of the affected employees shall not be affected as they will be reassigned to other departments, providing secured employment for the volunteer employees as they will be absorbed by the contract provider as regular workers subject to qualifications and standards.
Further, the idea to privatize the garbage collection in the city has long been proposed by some concerned sectors but the same was not fully recognized where the same was eventually shelved. According to the council, the present public health emergency caused by the Corona virus Disease (COVID) 2019 pandemic coupled by the increased volume of garbage to be collected and disposed had brought to fore the need to revisit the clamor of the concerned sectors to work on the privatization the collections of all garbage within the jurisdiction of the city.
At present, the local government, through the City General Services Office, is charge of the collection of garbage from the city’s barangays and deliver the same to the temporary waste transfer station located within the Baguio Dairy Farm property.
The collected garbage will then be transferred to the trucks of the private hauler that was commissioned by the city to haul the city’s residual waste from the temporary waste transfer station to the Urdaneta City landfill.
Since 2007, the local government had been hauling the city’s generated residual waste previously from the former Irisan dumpsite to the sanitary landfill of Metro Clark Sanitary Waste Management Corporation in Capas, Tarlac before the same was transferred to the Urdaneta City landfill in Pangasinan.
Aside from venturing into the privatization of the city’s garbage collection and disposal, the local government is eying the put up of the proposed waste to energy plant in nearby Sablan town that will permanently solve the garbage collection and disposal woes of the Baguio-La Trinidad- Itogon-Sablan-Tuba-Tublay (BLISTT) area in the future once the same will turn out to be feasible.
Earlier, BLISTT local chief executives signed a memorandum of understanding for the conduct of a feasibility study for the establishment of the waste to energy plant in a private property in Sablan town subject to the conduct of the required free and prior informed consent once the same will be feasible.
Dexter A. See/ABN