September 16 to 22, 2012

Garbage trucks 

bug down

City may reek

If worse comes to worst, San Carlos City will also start to stink of garbage.

Retire or die. Garbage trucks with different mechanical ills take a rest at the parking lot of San Carlos City Hall.

The bleak forecast comes after three of the six garbage trucks of San Carlos broke down leaving the 17 ton-daily garbage output to only three running trucks working at 16 hours a day. 

Engr. Arthur Batomalaque, head of the Solid Waste Management Office, admitted the report that the three trucks still await replacement of spare parts and that the three in running condition are doing double time to collect garbage covering six routes within the city proper while special schedules are made to collect from upland barangays.

Age matters

The ageing trucks, too, await replacement.

"Ang mga garbage truck nato, dugay na. Daan na bitaw unya sige ug ka breakdown," Batomalaque explained the grim situation.

The SWMO head added that of the six trucks, three are compactors and the remaining are open dump trucks. One is a 1978 truck, while the others were purchased in the 1980s. Only two had been purchased recently, 2009.

However, Batomalaque cannot exactly point when all six trucks can again be serviceable because of the slow bidding and procurement process for spare parts.

"Depende na kung kanus-a maayo ang guba na trucks kay dugay ang process sa pagpalit sa spare parts," he said.

One good point though, is that 70 percent of the city's garbage do not go to the landfill because of the materials recovery facilities in different upland barangays that take care of their own garbage and the Eco-Center that segregates wastes and recyclables.

Cooperation

Batomalaque also emphasized that residents should cooperate with the SWMO by segregating garbage at source.                     

He advised that if trucks fail to collect in a day, garbage should not be dumped on sugar cane fields as is the practice of some residents who hire pedicab drivers to do this.

At present, SWMO is still trying to manage the collection crisis by working the trucks in two shifts per day while their goal to buy one new truck every year remains to be realized.