FORMER President and now Manila Mayor Joseph E. Estrada and other local officials are facing administrative and criminal charges for violating several environmental laws for dumping waste in the waters of Manila Bay for its publicity stunt last Friday.
“Our legal department is looking into it now,” said Ely Ildelfonso, executive director of the Secretariat of the National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC), referring to representatives of the legal affairs unit of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). The DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) acts as the Secretariat of the NSWMC.
Whoever dumped the garbage during the event will be held liable, he said.
Last Friday Estrada led a cleanup drive in Manila Bay. However, as part of the video and photo opportunity, employees of the city government dumped waste, which they later picked up.
The publicity stunt was condemned by netizens, humiliating Estrada and the city government.
Ildelfonso said the act of dumping garbage, even for purpose of increasing awareness or publicity stunt, violates the law against garbage dumping.
Among the laws violated by the much-criticized “publicity stunt” are Republic Act (RA) 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act (NSWMC) of 2000, and the RA 9275 or the Clean Water Act of 2004.
The NSWMC is tasked to implement RA 9003, which calls for the institutionalization of a national program that will manage the control, transfer, transport, processing and disposal of solid waste in the country.
“LGUs [local government units] should clean up waste already there. Not dump then clean it up in front of the camera,” Ildelfonso said.
He said LGUs should instead promote sound ecological solid-waste management, starting with segregation at source, recycling, composting and properly hauling and dumping wastes in engineered sanitary landfills.
“They should help promote segregation at source to help address the garbage problem,” he said.
The NSWMC said uncollected solid waste end up in the streets, clogging water wastes or worse, flushing out of bodies of water like Laguna de Bay or Manila Bay.
Metro Manila has an 80-percent collection efficiency. This means 20 percent of the wastes produced every day become part of Metro Manila’s garbage woes, causing flooding.
Garbage is a major environmental and health issue in the Philippines, with 40,000 tons of solid wastes being produced every day.
Under RA 9003, LGUs are mandated to enforce proper waste segregation, recycling and composting to reduce the volume of garbage for disposal in engineered sanitary landfills.
So far, the NSWMC, in coordination with the Office of the Ombudsman, has filed charges against 50 LGUs with 150 others facing the same fate for its failure to implement the garbage law.