City Hall stands to gain P1m on Elipe’s ‘grocery bag’ ordinance

By Lito Rulona

The city government stands to gain more than P1 million from various malls and department stores, here, if only the “grocery bag” ordinance was properly implement before it was repealed, the city treasurer bared yesterday.

However, city treasurer Glenn Bañez said despite the resolution issued by the city council, the city government still has to collect funds.

On November 9, the city council resolution issued a repealing ordinance regulating the distribution of single-use plastic bags and requiring retail establishments to collect a pass-through charge.

“As a standard operating procedure, the establishment has to charge from their customers a pass-on charge to the consumers and this will be remitted to the city government. Since, there is an ordinance nga gihimo niadtong 2012. Meaning effective 2012 up to November 9, 2015 kinahanglan ilang iemit ang ilang gi-charged sa ilang mga customers,” Bañez said.

The City Government started the collection of P1 on July last year for the use of plastic bags or cello-phanes in retail establishments to discourage the use of non-biodegradable materials. City Ordinance No. 12240-2012, authored by councilor President Elipe, obligated all establishments to remit the proceeds of the carry-out bag fee to City Hall within 10 working days every month.

“Gikasubo namo kini tungod kay gamay lamang nga tawo that were tasked to monitor on how many plastic bags that were disposed for the past several years. However, the city government will collect base on the point of sale from the cash register machines. We will also base collections from their delivery receipts,” Bañez said.

Bañez added that if an establishment has no cash register machines, the collection would be based on the cash receipts that they had issued to their customers.

“Some of the so called Big four department stores has not remitted to the city government the so-called environmental fees as far way back 2012. When we implemented the pass-through charge on plastic bags, karamihan nito ay hindi nagemit. Basically, all the pass-on charged should be remitted to the city government during the effectivity of the ordinance,” Bañez pointed out.

He said the city government will include this unremitted charges on the coming 2016 renewal of business permits.

“Naging lenient ngayon ang city government dahil we will not charge them on the actual customers that they serve para hindi sila mabigatan. We will charge them on minimal basis,” he said. (Lito Rulona)