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Secretary of a city in São Paulo disguises himself as a garbage collector to practically inspect outsourced service of the city hall without being recognized
Uncommon inspection in Marília exposed the backstage of outsourced urban collection, after secretary accompanied trucks, weighings, and routes without being identified by the company responsible for the municipal service.
The municipal secretary of Environment and Public Services of Marília, Mário Rui Andrade de Moura, stated that he posed as a garbage collector to accompany, without being recognized, the execution of outsourced urban collection in the city in the interior of São Paulo.
The report was published by Marília Notícia on September 15, 2025, during an interview about public cleaning, urban maintenance, and inspection of municipal services.
The interview informs that the secretary decided to accompany the operation at the beginning of the administration, when garbage collection faced delays, but does not present the exact date when the action on the streets occurred.
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To check the situation closely, Mário Rui said he walked alongside the truck, demanded accountability from representatives of the outsourced company, and followed stages of the service to understand how the work was carried out in practice.
The secretary also reported that he even went to the company responsible for the collection without them knowing he was the head of the municipal department responsible for service inspection.
“I went as any other garbage collector,” he declared to the portal, explaining that he wanted to observe the truck weighing process and clear up doubts about the verification of collected waste.
Inspection of outsourced collection in Marília
The inspection described by the secretary included monitoring the weighing of vehicles used in the collection, a stage mentioned by him as part of the control over the volume of waste transported.
According to the explanation given in the interview, the truck enters loaded onto the scale, unloads the collected material, and returns empty for a new measurement, a procedure used to calculate the effectively transported weight.
According to Mário Rui, the tickets issued in this process are compared with spreadsheets used in service control, which allows comparing operational records with the data presented by the contracted company.
In addition to this monitoring, he stated that he conducted weigh-ins on another scale to compare results and check if the recorded numbers matched what occurred in the operational routine of outsourced collection.
The measure was presented as a way to address doubts about the service’s operation, especially because the verification of waste depends on trucks, routes, weigh-in receipts, and administrative records.
In the interview, the secretary said that he did not visit the location just once and that the team started to check weekly the weigh-in receipts sent by the company responsible for the service.
Monitored company was not identified in the interview
Despite reporting the anonymous visit to the streets and the company, the interview used as a basis does not publicly identify the name of the monitored outsourced company nor the specific contract related to the collection monitored by the secretary.
This absence limits the complete contextualization of the episode, as identifying the company and the contract would allow the reader to understand more precisely which service was verified and in which period.
What is known, from the published report, is that the action was motivated by delays in collection and the need to check if the operational records matched the executed service.
When discussing the start of the management, Mário Rui stated that points of failure were identified, there was direct pressure on the company’s manager, and the owner of the outsourced company was called for a meeting at the department.
After the demands, the secretary declared that the situation was resolved, although the publication does not detail the date of the meeting nor present documents of the contract mentioned in the interview.
Department of Environment and Public Services
The Municipal Department of Environment and Public Services appears on the official website of the Marília City Hall as the body responsible for coordinating public cleaning services, supervising collection itineraries and schedules.
Among the department’s responsibilities are also the control of the conservation of parks and gardens and the application of administrative acts within the legal areas under the responsibility of the municipal department.
In the same interview with Marília Notícia, Mário Rui stated that “public cleaning is the face of the government,” a phrase used when commenting on actions of mowing, tree pruning, shrub removal, and maintenance of public spaces.
Upon taking office, according to the secretary, the department encountered difficulties related to equipment and fleet, which led to internal meetings and reorganization of urban cleaning fronts.
Among the locations mentioned by him are the Municipal Palace, Saturnino de Brito Square, the central region of Ganha Tempo, and Esmeraldas Avenue, points included in the first reported actions.
Since the early days of the administration, as reported by Mário Rui, the department has been working on cleaning, maintenance, and operational support services in different public areas of the municipality.
Urban Maintenance and Irregular Disposal
In addition to garbage collection, the secretary mentioned pruning, mowing, weeding, removal, curb painting, and waste collection as part of the initiatives carried out by the department.
In another initiative, the department was also presented by him as supporting other areas of municipal administration, especially in logistics demands and removal of materials generated by maintenance teams.
The irregular disposal of debris, garbage, and bulky materials was also mentioned by Mário Rui, who stated that there are 108 mapped areas with this type of problem in Marília.
According to the secretary, teams were cleaning points in the morning and, in some cases, the same locations were again subjected to improper disposal on the same day.
When commenting on alternatives available to the population, Mário Rui mentioned three ecopoints, in addition to selective collection and the Cata-Treco Operation, presented as an action of the Municipal Health Department.
The operation, according to him, has logistical support from the Department of Environment and Public Services, responsible for assisting in the removal of materials and addressing urban demands.
In this context, the secretary’s statement reinforced the need for awareness about proper disposal, as cleaning public areas does not prevent recurrence when waste returns to the same points.
Behind the Scenes of Municipal Public Service
The experience of going through as a collector gained prominence because it led the manager responsible for oversight to directly observe a part of the service that usually appears to the public only when it fails.
In the reported case, operational investigation occurred in trucks, routes, scales, and weighing receipts, central elements for controlling outsourced collection and verifying the records presented.
Although it does not replace contracts, audits, document verification, and technical oversight, the episode shows how the municipal management claimed to have sought to compare administrative records with the daily execution of urban collection.
However, the exact date of the action and the identification of the audited company remain without public detail, relevant information to more precisely contextualize the episode reported by the secretary.
