DFA HANDLES CANADA TOXIC
WASTE ISSUE WITH
KID GLOVES
Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero chided the Department of
Foreign Affairs (DFA) for not taking a stronger stance when it asked Canada to
take back the toxic waste it has been dumping in the Philippines since 2013.
Escudero, who
chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, said the
Philippine government should exhaust all measures to ensure that the waste goes
back to Canada.
Presiding over
today’s (September 9) committee hearing on the country’s waste disposal and
management system, Escudero expressed disgust at how Canada’s waste has caused
the Philippines so much trouble.
When reports of Canada’s dumping of toxic waste in the
Philippines broke, an inter-agency committee composed of the DFA, Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and the Bureau of Customs (BoC) was
formed to address the issue.
The DFA sent a
diplomatic note to Canada on the matter, but far from expressing the strong
public sentiment against the dumping of waste, the foreign affairs department
only sought the Canadian government’s assistance in the “expeditious return of
containers to the port of origin at no cost to the government.”
“Canada was treated with kid gloves. Dapat mas
matindi at mas mabigat ang posisyon natin laban dito. Hindi nung sinabi ng
Canada na wala kaming batas na pwedeng gamitin para utusan ang aming local
exporter na ibalik ang mga yan, hindi na rin natin ipinilit,” Escudero said.
Canada is a signatory to the Basel Convention,
an international treaty that bans the export of waste.
The first batch of 50 container vans,
incorrectly labeled “recyclable plastic materials,” arrived in the Philippine
ports in June 2013. Another batch came a few months after. The vans were found
to carry household wastes.
In June, 26 containers of the rotting garbage
were dumped at a sanitary landfill in Tarlac.
Environmentalists fiercely protested against
the dumping, saying the garbage being shipped here contained “toxic, hazardous
garbage.” The DENR, however, told the Senate committee that the materials
inside the disputed container vans are “neither toxic nor hazardous.”
In today’s hearing, Escudero asked the
inter-agency task committee to provide a conclusive sampling of the waste to
determine whether it is toxic or not. He said the DENR, DFA and BoC should
present a more comprehensive report so that the government can make relevant
recommendations “to strengthen our stance in this toxic issue.”
“This is a matter of national shame and pride.
A shame on Canada for dumping their garbage on someone else’s backyard, our
pride as a nation of peoples, not of garbage cans. We must stand up and clean
our backyard of this Canadian waste,” Escudero said. /MP
No comments:
Post a Comment