STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS - Bacolod City

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In line also with providing better services to the urban poor, we launched
last April, 2008 “Task Force Bantay-Bugas” to keep a special price watch on rice
supply, rice sales and rice prices among dealers, suppliers, distributors and
retailers of this basic commodity. This task force also assisted in delivering NFA
rice stocks to authorized outlets in the barangays and puroks of the city to make
cheaper rice more readily available especially to the poor and to help the NFA
make sure that their rice are not rebagged and sold at commercial prices. This
project will continue as long as there is a need for it.
SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT
We come now to another priority area of service – that of solid waste
management.
Our activities in this area focused on 3 main thrusts: improve garbage
collection, improve garbage disposal and purchase a dumpsite where we can
eventually establish a sanitary landfill in compliance with R.A. 9003.
On measures to improve garbage collection, our Department of Public
Services or DPS reviewed its garbage collection routes and schedules and
implemented the block system of garbage collection. On the average everyday,
we handle more than 150 tons of garbage. We are now fielding 33 garbage
trucks to 51 collection zones in the city plus a striker unit to attend to phoned-in
complaints from areas where collection may have bogged down because
assigned garbage trucks needed emergency repairs.
The downtown area and the three public markets are serviced daily by 3
shifts. Residential areas are serviced once or twice a week. Garbage collection
by DPS is also augmented by some barangays which have their own dump
trucks and are the ones doing door-to-door collection in some of their areas.
The DPS also monitored and closed 30 mini-dumpsites that have
developed in various points in the city, some even on median islands of city
streets. Keeping people in neighborhoods informed of garbage pick-up schedule
in their block have greatly helped towards the eradication of these unsightly and
unsanitary mini-dumpsites.
Public address systems have been installed in our dump trucks so that
neighborhoods can be alerted early enough of their arrival and give the residents
enough time to put out their garbage along the street for pick-up.
We also instituted a similar measure in the 3 major public markets where
garbage is brought out only upon the arrival of garbage trucks to lessen the
incidence of garbage scattered in the outside premises of these markets.