Sec. Roy Cimatu risks getting P100 budget for DENR

MANILA, Philippines — Invoking helplessness in cleaning up highly polluted water tributaries, Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu has earned the ire of mostly female lawmakers from the House of Representatives, as well as other environmental advocates, and risked getting a measly budget for his department next year.

“He said he could not do anything and he’s even mad,” Buhay party-list Rep. Lito Atienza said in Filipino, recalling how Cimatu conducted himself during the agency’s budget hearing at the House committee on appropriations last Tuesday.

Such pronouncements did not sit well with his female colleagues who, like him, were enraged when they never saw any budget allocation for the cleanup of Manila Bay, Laguna de Bay and Pasig River as well as obligating water concessionaires to put up water treatment facilities.

“What has the DENR done to clean these up? Cleaning up these three water bodies would not only provide a safe environment to our residents, but could also spell an upsurge in the country’s economy,” Atienza, a former environment secretary, insisted.

Another thing that irritated them was the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)’s absence of any plans to “compel” water concessionaires Maynilad and Manila Water to fulfill their obligation for the establishment of water treatment facilities which they have promised since 1997.

Atienza further said that this angered Nueva Ecija Rep. Estrellita Suansing who sits as chair of the House committee on ecology and recommended a P100 budget for the DENR for 2019, but which he sarcastically reduced to only P10 – if only to ensure its closure.

“The DENR could not give an intelligent answer to questions as to when the wastewater treatment facilities would be completed, except to say that it would be completed around 2037,” he said.

The former Manila mayor lamented that the absence of such facilities have resulted in making Manila Bay and Pasig River virtually “one giant pozzo negro” since all “household waste and sewage from Metro Manila and surrounding provinces” are directly discharged into them.