City hall issues conflicting claims

By February 5, 2006Headlines, News

GARBAGE DUMPING IN SAN JACINTO

Was it the classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing? Or was a subordinate merely kept in the dark about a particular government transaction?
Either way explains the conflicting statements between Mayor Benjamin Lim and City Waste Management Officer Reginaldo Ubando on the transfer of dried wastes from the Dagupan dumpsite to a private lot in San Jacinto town.
Ubando insisted the city government never transferred its decomposed and decomposing waste to San Jacinto despite documentary evidence attesting to the same, and recently on admission from City Mayor Benjamin Lim himself.

 Mayor Lim admitted in his speech during the formal turn over of one of the Material Recovery Facilities in one city barangay that more than 1,000 truckloads of wastes were removed from the dumpsite in Bonuan with the help of a contractor.

 But Ubando had flatly earlier denied knowledge of the removal and transfer of decomposed and semi-decomposed wastes from Dagupan to San Jacinto last year.

 “That’s not true. Our dump trucks never took a trip to San Jacinto, I don’t know George Lee personally,” Ubando said.

 Lee, a businessman, obviously the contractor that Mayor Lim was referring to, reportedly owned the trucks that hauled the decomposed and semi-decomposed garbage.

 Ubando said the Dagupan City government respects the people of San Jacinto and it could not do a thing to hurt their feelings.

 But Mayor Lim contradicted Ubando’s claim during the turnover of one of the newly completed MRFs in one city barangay.

 The mayor emphasized that it was no longer of any concern to the city where the contractor brought the 1,000 truckloads of wastes that were removed from the Dagupan dumpsite in Bonuan.

Lim also told his audience that one of the property owners near the dumpsite named (Guy) Solis who just came back from the United States, had threatened the city with a court suit because the garbage dumpsite already extended to their property.

 Interviewed on video-tape, Barangay Captain Vicente Agsaoay of Macayug, San Jacinto, confirmed it was the wastes from Dagupan that were really dumped on Lee’s property, a low-lying area that needed filling.

 He said he stopped one or two trucks delivering the dried wastes into Lee’s property and Lee assured them that these were seven-year old decomposed garbage.

 But Agsaoay observed that some of the wastes carried by the trucks were still wet.
 
The barangay captain was also told that the hauling of the materials had already stopped since no more dried wastes had been removed from the dumpsite.
 
According to Agsaoay, the downside to the filling of the area with the decomposed garbage was the suspicion of the community that he and members of the barangay councils were bribed into allowing the dumping of wastes from Dagupan into Macayug.- AQL


 

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