Some of you may know from my previous post that the intelligent mayor of Bogotá came up with a great idea to terminate the contracts with the specialist rubbish collection companies. Instead, he adopted a ‘DIY’ approach to rubbish collection just one week before Christmas in 2012. With no skills, tools or the right people, the government suffered serious backlash. A dirty, smelly and unsightly city proved that no one in the government thought through the operations before hammering the decision.

The PR team of the mayor, Gustavo Petro, decided to reply to my criticism with a tweet. ‘Please refer to the new Daewoo trucks made in Korea that are going to arrive in three months’ (translated and paraphrased). With these brand new Korean rubbish collection trucks the government thinks that they can cover up all the issues and irregularities in the inefficient and costly operation.

Two months have passed by since the calamity first started. During this period, the media investigation has exposed even more ugly truths about the Petro administration. The first batch of second handed rubbish collection trucks (please refer to the first article for more atrocious details) turned out to have been purchased from an online auction as ‘wrecked and damaged’ trucks. The initial 23 trucks were bought for US$ 200 each!! The trucks, aka trash, are unfit for use.

The only reason the dirt trucks were bought was corruption. On the import application to the National Tax and Custom Office, it was declared that each of these US$ 200 trucks was bought by ‘Milton Head’, through Technical Capital SA, for US$ 32,000! The trucks were in turn leased to the government (simply for more money laundering opportunities). These US$200 trucks were among the 60 trucks that cost the government US$ 14,000 a month to rent! In a simple sentence, the contractor hired by the city bought ‘rubbish’ and then leased ‘rubbish’ to the city.

On top of the scandalous amount of bribery that has been involved, none of the government officials who flew over to USA to check that the trucks were fine is knowledgeable in import, customs or rubbish collection machines.

With this hideous crime, I can’t help but think, how on earth it is possible that people out there who are privileged by their power and the networks from which where they came, people from prestigious families who sent them to the best schools in the country, don’t respect their family names, conscientiousness or the simple act of doing good (or doing neutral, at least, not doing bad)? They are so driven by making money that they don’t care through which way they make it.

References:

El Espectador, ‘The cost of disorder’

El Espectador, (Petro faces formal investigation from the Attorney General)