BAGUIO CITY – The city’s Bids and Wards Committee announced that the bidding process for the hauling of the generated residual waste to the Urdaneta City sanitary landfill is now underway.
City Budget officer Leticia O. Clemente informed members of the local legislative body that the BAC finished the pre-procurement process for the determination of the hauler of the city’s residual waste to Urdaneta with the hope that the hauling contract will be awarded to the winning bidder on or before February 15, 2018.
The local government will work on a budget of P92.2 million for the hauling of the city’s residual waste to the Urdaneta City sanitary landfill once the bidding process shall have been completed and the winning hauler shall have been determined and given the award for the one-year contract.
Currently, the city is spending P935.50 as hauling cost per ton of residual waste being hauled out of the city plus P550 per ton as tipping fee being paid to the management of the Metro Clark Waste Management Services in Capas, Tarlac.
However, Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan was forced to issue a directive to the City General Services office to study the possibility of returning the dumping of the city’s residual waste to Urdaneta City sanitary landfill after he received a verbal proposal from its management that it is willing to maintain the P550 per ton as tipping fee compared to the P650 per ton tipping fee of Metro Clark.
Earlier, the local government bidded out the hauling of the city’s residual waste to the Metro Clark sanitary landfill using the increased tipping fee but it was forced to cancel the process after receiving the proposal from the management of the Urdaneta sanitary landfill of its willingness to maintain the charging of the same tipping fee without increasing the same that resulted to the repeat of the bidding process.
Aside from the non-increase in the tipping fee that will be collected from the city, Buyocan explained that the hauling cost of bringing the city’s residual waste to Urdaneta is also reduced to approximately P780 per ton considering that it is over 140 kilometers nearer to the city compared to Metro Clark.
While the city’s current hauler is having problems on its existing staging area in Lamtang, Puguis, La Trinidad and its failure to get the social acceptability of the people of Taloy Sur for its proposed new staging area, he claimed one of the conditions imposed by the local government to any bidder is the presence of a staging area approved by the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB).
Local officials reiterated their previous appeal to residents to strictly observe the segregation of waste at source to help in significantly reducing the volume of waste garbage hauled out of the city and lessen the government funds being spent for the specific program.
It has been observed that most of the residents in the different barangays do not actually comply with the segregation of waste at source for reasons only known to them. /By Dexter A. See
