Groups petition vs. old incinerators

Non-government organizations launched a campaign calling on the government to cancel an estimated P500 million worth of medical incinerators for 26 public hospitals in the country.

Freedom from Debt Coalition and Ecological Waste Coalition spearheaded the “Stop Toxic Debt!” advocacy project opposing the alleged substandard incinerators placed in government hospitals, including the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City.

They said that as of October 2, more than 200 members of different environment groups, sectoral representatives and people’s organizations, institutions and personalities both from here and abroad have signed the online petition that is being spread by e-mail.

“We have one substandard and now banned incinerator at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, part of the 26 incinerators purchased under the Austrian Medical Waste Project approved by NEDA in 1996 and implemented through a loan equivalent to P503.65 million,” said Lito Vasquez, FDC-Cebu secretary general. He added that the national government is paying $2 million annually until year 2014 for this project.

The NGOs said that the now-defunct debt-creating and polluting Austrian incinerators are still being paid for by the Philippine government to the Austrian government.

“That’s why the Stop Toxic Debt! Campaign is stepping up its campaign against this.  We are once again circulating the online petition calling for the cancellation of this “toxic debt” by the Austrian government.  We hope to gather as many signatures as possible to effectively register our clamor on this issue,” they said in their petition.

The NGOs are opposed to the project because the incinerators that the Philippine government allegedly received were clearly obsolete and were even banned from Austria itself for being highly pollutive.

Furthermore, early in its operations, they said the machines were retired because of the passage of the Clean Air Act, which has a strong provision against the use of incinerators and other ‘dirty technologies’.

FDC and EcoWaste described the incinerators as a clear example of an illegitimate debt, which was incurred to finance an “ill-conceived development project which posed harm to our people, much more to our environment.”

The issue likewise gathered a lot of attention from the media as it is being compared to the idle Bataan Nuclear Power Plant —a classic example of illegitimate debt.

“Because of this, no less than Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said that Malacañang is seriously considering the possibility of reviewing the Austrian loan project, which he described as ‘bad debt’,” the NGOs said citing the recent statement of Malacañang published in some national papers.

They also said that in the Philippine Legislative arena, the Stop Toxic Debt Campaign was successful in getting the attention of legislators from the 14th House of Representatives especially from the minority bloc, the Liberal Party as well as from the Committee of Appropriations headed by Rep. Edcel Lagman.

The Stop Toxic Debt! Campaign has monitored closely and mounted pressure on the coming plenary budget deliberations of Congress beginning October 3, urging the legislators to strike out payments for said incinerators.  They also expect the campaign to put pressure on the Austrian government, particularly on the Austrian Embassy here in the Philippines to cancel this loan agreement.  — Wenna A. Berondo/BRP