DAVAO CITY – A partylist group filed a resolution today at the House of Representatives to investigate the dumping of trash from Canada into the country as a lawmaker said it violates a convention.
Bayan Muna Representative Neri Colmenares, in a press release said they filed House Resolution 2220 to investigate the said incident and they want a complete and immediate stop in the dumping of “toxic imported garbage” in Philippine landfills.
Colmenares said “the Philippines and Canada are signatories to the Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal.”
“The objective of the Basel Convention is to protect less developed nations from the dumping of hazardous wastes from developed countries like Canada,” he said.
“As signatories to the Basel, Canada has committed a violation by exporting their garbage into our country,” said Colmenares.
Colmenares said “this is the height of insult and callousness when our own government allows another country to use our lands as its own garbage dump.”
“This is tantamount to an affront to our national sovereignty. How pliable is President Aquino to the Canadian government for agreeing to such a trashy deal?” Colmenares said.
Meanwhile, Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate, a Mindanao lawmaker of Bayan Muna described the dumping as the “(President Benigno Simeon) Aquino administration’s garbage economics.”
“President Aquino seems to be terribly browbeaten after his state visit to Canada last March. Instead of registering the Filipino people’s rejection of such an arrangement, it seems he had even expedited the dumping of their junk in our soil,” Zarate said.
Zarate also said the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Environmental Management Bureau (DENR-EMB (DENR-EMB) claims that the “imported garbage are not toxic is contrary to the Waste Analysis and Characterization Study (WACS) conducted by the same agency a year ago.”
“Clearly, these materials were not plastics for recycling but a mishmash of kitchen waste, broken bottles, household residuals, and even used electronic waste,” he said.
Zarate said that they got reports that “used adult diapers are even in the heap.”
This is simply not acceptable,” Rep Zarate said.
Bayan Muna said the provincial government of Tarlac has “objected the continued dumping of tons of imported garbage from Canada in its landfill despite the existence of a local ordinance banning such a practice.”
“We urge the local government of Tarlac to continue asserting its authority and prohibit the continued dumping of these garbage,” he said.
Meanwhile, members of the partylist group picketed the gates of the Department of the Environment and National Resources (DENR.)
The protesters dumped symbols of the Canadian government, President Aquino, and the DENR seal in a trash bin labelled “nabubulok” (biodegradable) expressing their disapproval over the dumping of tons of waste shipped from Canada.
“Our country is not a dumpsite for rich countries like Canada. If it values our dignity and sovereignty, the Aquino government must order the return of these garbage where they came from,” said Zarate.(davaotoday.com)
