NOW we know that we are not the only ones complaining about the garbage disposal-related issue in Davao City. Our friend Serafin “Jun” Ledesma, retired telecommunications company executive, former director of the Davao City Water District (DCWD), and now a full-fledged media practitioner, is also complaining of the inefficient household waste collection services of those charged of the responsibility by the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO).
Yes, according to Jun whose family lives at Robinson’s Highlands along Diversion Road, residents in their subdivision have noticed in the last two months that the schedule of the collection of garbage in their areas has become erratic resulting to the household waste smelling undesirable odor. The situation, according to our friend, has already disturbed the senses of homeowners that many would rather spend their time inside malls in the downtown or go somewhere else.
The presence of rotting garbage inside waste bins that are already full to the brim is becoming a dominant and highly intolerable sight in the posh residential enclave.
Perhaps in an effort to have the situation in their subdivision known by the local government authorities, he posted his sentiment on Facebook. Many social media enthusiasts reacted and apparently gave similar observations on the CENRO inefficiency and the apparent failure of the local government administration to monitor the deteriorating services of the CENRO.
While we are one with the comments of netizens on Jun’s post, we have our other complaint on the CENRO and the current LGU administration. As we have been harping on this issue in this page for several months now, the CENRO, or City Hall for that matter, seems adamant on the many garbage bins which the city purchased about three years back that have been allocated and delivered to recipient suburban barangays of the city. After the delivery these garbage receptacles are merely piled in some corners of the barangay hall compound and until now have remained idle since these were not distributed to the specific locations in the barangays that these are supposed to be stationed.
Yesterday as we heard a Sunday mass in a local chapel we noticed that the garbage bins pile in the said barangay is now slowly covered with the growth of tall grasses. The canvas which the barangay officials used in supposedly protecting the bins from the elements of nature like heat of the sun, rain and the destruction of the bins due to possible leaning of other hard and heavy objects is now tattered and full of holes.
In the course of our rounds in some other barangays in our district and neighboring areas, we noted that there are several other recipients of the garbage bins that are also just being piled in some nooks of barangay covered courts.
We do not know if there is anyone who will argue with us that such neglect of the bins is one way of wasting the city’s resources. Of course we have an idea how much is the cost of one receptacle. And if the amount of overprice is to be factored into it, then all the more that the city could have spent a fortune from the taxes paid by the people of Davao City just to acquire the bins.
Now, with us joining Jun Ledesma in bringing to the public consciousness the seeming inutility of CENRO and other city government officials in getting notice of the problem, both of us and the many other residents who have the same observation are fervently hoping that the desired action on the issue is done by those concerned the soonest possible time.
If we have to quote Jun’s Facebook post he said, “It’s 2 months into the new city administration and the city’s garbage collection service is getting even worse.”
Knowing Jun Ledesma to be close to the current city mayor’s father, we have no doubt Mayor Baste Duterte knows him as well. And that is where lies our hope for the eventual action of Jun, ours, and other city residents importuning.
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Again the DCWD was at it the other day. We mean the agency’s giving advisory that a water service interruption is to be implemented on a particular period of time on a given day and then does not make good of its schedule and has the outage done instead on another day and time frame.
Some two weeks back we wrote about this situation because there was no advisory of an outage on that day and suddenly the water was gone from our faucets in our rural residence in Talandang, Tugbok District. The interruption started shortly before 10 in the morning and continued until the next day. Shortly before 12 noon of that day we got a notice of water outage to start at 12 noon until 3 p.m. of the same day. But that was the very time when the long water service stoppage was about over and the water was slowly coming back. In other words, at the time the water service stoppage was announced, water was already starting to flow after an almost 24-hour interruption.
And this happened again last Friday, September 2. It was announced earlier by the water firm that an outage was to be implemented last Friday, September 2 from 9 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. But it did not happen. Instead the outage came yesterday from around 2 p.m. until evening.
And we had already stored so much volume of water that we were supposed to use during the interruption period. We have to dispose of it for fear of contamination or having been laid eggs of dengue-carrying mosquitoes because the containers we have do not have the appropriate cover. That definitely means a huge addition to ours and other consumers’ monthly water bills. We are starting to smell something obnoxious here.
