The exceptional hiring used by the San Miguelito Municipality to sustain garbage collection after the main contract expired in January is beginning to raise questions due to disparities between the real cost of the service and the allocations that are later structured under broader financial schemes during the administration of Mayor Irma Hernández, from the independent movement Vamos. Official documents reviewed by La Verdad Panamá show that during December 2025 and January 2026, the mayor's office resorted to minor contracting processes, with amounts not exceeding B/.50,000 monthly, which allows for a concrete reference of how much the service costs according to the participating companies themselves. Offers that set the real price. In Quotation Sheet No. 026-2025, dated December 2, 2025, for renting machinery for solid waste collection in critical points of the district, the participants were: PRONTO ASEO, S.A. – B/.49,933.92; ECO-SEPTIC PANAMÁ CORP. – B/.48,920.40; RELLENO TRANSPORTE Y EQUIPO, S.A. – B/.49,784.96; ROCA ATLÁNTICA, S.A. – B/.47,450.13. The contract was awarded to ROCA ATLÁNTICA, S.A., for presenting the lowest price. Subsequently, in Quotation Sheet No. 001-2026, dated January 2, 2026, for extraordinary cleaning sessions, the competitors were: RELLENO TRANSPORTE Y EQUIPO, S.A. – B/.51,000.00; ROCA ATLÁNTICA, S.A. – B/.47,296.64. Again, the contract was awarded to ROCA ATLÁNTICA, S.A.. In both processes, the municipality itself recognizes that with between B/.47 thousand and B/.50 thousand monthly, the auxiliary garbage collection service can be executed. The gap that raises alarms. Internal sources from the Comptroller General's Office indicated that the focus of attention appears when these cost references are compared with contractual schemes that later scale to much higher figures. "If the companies say the service costs close to 50 thousand dollars a month, any structure that ends up multiplying that value without a real change in scope must be clearly explained," the source told La Verdad Panamá. It indicated that, projecting those values, three companies at B/.50,000 for six months do not exceed one million dollars, while the schemes being analyzed in the municipality are around B/.3.8 million. "That difference forces a review of whether there was fragmentation, unsupported extensions, or a distortion between the initial offer and the actual payment," it stated. Urgency is not a financial license. The regular garbage collection contract in San Miguelito expired in January, which led the mayor's office to use "bridge" contracting to not suspend the service. "A forensic audit is required that cross-references offers, times, beneficiaries, responsible parties, and contractual modifications," it was indicated. "When the numbers don't align with the logic of the service, the problem stops being accounting-related and becomes institutional," they concluded. "Vamos" sold itself as the clean and transparent option. "If yesterday it cost 47 thousand, tomorrow it cannot cost four times more without a documented justification," he explained. He added that when the same companies repeat in minor processes and then global amounts much higher appear, it corresponds to review the entire cycle: offer, award, addenda, and payments. Forensic audit. It became known that a forensic audit will be carried out to get to the bottom of these processes, clearly going against the transparency that must be imposed in state contracts. "An administrative audit is not enough. In San Miguelito, garbage is the first test of whether coherence holds when money enters the scene."
