GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/19 March) — The city government has created three new offices in a bid to improve its service delivery to residents in all 26 barangays.
Mayor Darlene Antonino-Custodio said they established the city’s Waste Management Office, Office of the Building Official and the Information, Communications and Technology Division as part of their efforts to expand this year the local government’s service offerings and coverage.
She said they created the Waste Management Office as a new department to ensure the proper implementation of the city’s waste management programs.
“It will implement and manage a systematic, efficient, integrated and sustainable city waste management program, projects and initiatives,” the mayor said.
Custodio said the office is tasked to monitor, evaluate and enforce laws, ordinances and regulations pertaining to waste management and other related initiatives.
The city government earlier targeted the completion within this year of its P362 million sanitary landfill project, which is being developed within a 63.3-hectare property in Barangay Sinawal.
The landfill project, funded by a soft loan from the World Bank’s support for strategic local development and investment project is being constructed by R-II Builders and Philippine Ecology Systems Corporation Consortium under a “design-build-operate scheme.”
When completed, the mayor said the project will have a “materials recovery facility, sanitary landfill and waste disposal management system as well as other support facilities for the proper disposal of the city’s and neighboring towns’ solid wastes.”
Custodio said the Office of the Building Official is primarily responsible for the enforcement of the provisions of the National Building Code of the Philippines (Presidential Decree 1096) and its implementing rules and regulations as well as circulars, memoranda, opinions and decisions/orders issued on the matter.
The office will have overall administrative control and supervision over all works pertinent to buildings and related structures in the area, she said.
“It will take charge of the processing of all building permit applications and ancillary permits and certificates as well as other issuances,” she said.
Custodio said they also created the Information, Communications and Technology Office as a
full division of the Office of the City Mayor.
She said among its functions is to provide data and network security; render software and hardware maintenance, adaptation and acquisition; provide user helpdesk and technical support; secure maintenance of servers and data centers; and, manage connected users and computers to the servers, internet, databases and application systems,
It is also tasked to plan and implement software security protocols; troubleshoot and repair of virus and other related threats; and, take responsibility for projects such as development and maintenance of information systems, she said. (Allen V. Estabillo/MindaNews)
