Baguio residents asked to pay garbage taxes to speed up reforms

BAGUIO City, Philippines—Village leaders in the summer capital are now tasked to collect P20 garbage fees from 301,926 residents to help improve a solid waste management system that has been blamed for a fatal trash slide last  August 27.

Fresh from working out a garbage segregation scheme, Mayor Mauricio Domogan deputized village leaders to collect garbage fees from every household starting next month, using an unenforced provision of Baguio’s 2003 tax ordinance.

His Administrative Order 132, which was issued on October 12, institutionalizes a barangay (village) board collection system that is guided by Tax Ordinance 2003-03.

The clearing of a trash slide that had killed six people along Asin Road here has been costing the city coffers millions of pesos, according to city treasury officials.

The hauling of garbage from Km 5 on Asin Road, which straddles Baguio and neighboring Tuba, Benguet, has been extended for another month because of the volume of trash that collapsed from the 37-year-old decommissioned dump atop Barangay Irisan.

The old garbage is being hauled to a commercial landfill in Capas, Tarlac.

The city government also sends out potable water across the city limits to 280 households in Barangay Tadiangan in Tuba, whose water sources were contaminated by the trash slide, according to the Department of Health.

The city government is using its calamity funds amounting to about P90 million.