AN OFFICIAL of the City Local Environment and Natural Resources (Clenro) said they are set to require each village to put up a materials recovery facility (MRF) as Cagayan de Oro City targets only 20 percent of residual waste to be dumped at the new sanitary landfill in Pagalungan village.
If village participation is low, Clenro chief Edwin Dael said the first cell of the new landfill which will be opened next week will be full in just four months.
Dael said unresponsive and non-compliant villages will be sued for violation of the Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Program.
City Councilor Alam Lim, ABC president, said the plan is “too far-fetched,” adding that what the Clenro should focus first is the efficiency of the garbage collection, which is spearheaded by the IPM-Construction and Development Corporation (CDC).
Although villages might be forced to establish MRFs, Puntod village chief Marvin Beja said this would be “too expensive” for a village since a lot property will have to be purchased.
Beja said he does not see the need to put up MRFs in each village for a small city like Cagayan de Oro.
He said, however, the city can still be clean even without MRFs if proper garbage collection is ensured.
"Before MRF, dapat ang siyudad tarungon sa nila ang scheduling ug rota sa gakolekta sa basura. Kami sa barangay, we have our own truck to collect garbage. Pero akong naobserbahan sa IPM, wala silay supervisor nga gatuyok para unta mag-evaluate kung sakto ba ang trabaho sa ilang collector (Before the MRF, the city must first set proper schedulingnand route of the garbage collectors. In our barangay, we have our own truck to collect our garbage. Butn as I observed in the IPM, they have no supervisor to evaluate and guide their workers)," he said.
But Engineer Ed Bartolome of the IPM-CDC, said they have enough vehicles for garbage collection, noting that IPM has 60 vehicles, including 45 compactors and 15 dump trucks.
He said each of these can hold about four to eight tons of garbage.
"Mas maayos na ngayon ang collection, kasi may GPS na ‘yung mga trucks natin, unlike noon. Ngayon, ‘yung mga hindi nakukuha na basura malo-locate ‘yun through GPS, mapupuntahan agad (Our collection now is better, we have GPS to locate our trucks and monitor them. If we have monitored unpicked-up garbage, we can send somebody to immediately collect it)," he said.
Also, Bartolome said they will soon build a transfer station so not all trucks will go to Pagalungan village to dump the garbage.
He said the transfer station will save time since Pagalungan village is 16 kilometers away from the city proper.
In the transfer station, he said, a compactor will be on stand-by to meet and pick-up the garbage which was collected by another truck that came from the city.
"Kapag nagkaroon tayo ng transfer station, ang equivalent ng isang truck na papasok dito sa landfill area is mga 4 lang na contractor (If we have the transfer station, only 4 compactors will go to the landfill area) while the others will be left roaming around in the city to collect another batch of the garbage," he said.
The city's expenses for the engineered landfill is pegged at P600 million for the total 45-hectare area, but initially, it only spent P100 million this year to open cell one or a 1-hectare area.
According to Clenro, the city generates 560 tons of garbage per day but only 23 percent of it should be dumped in the new landfill.
If this will be achieved, cell one is still available for dumping until 14 months or more, or they will have to open another cell.
