DFA chief not keen on shipping back Canada trash

MANILA, Philippines — Despite President Duterte’s order, the country’s top diplomat is against shipping tons of Canadian garbage back to its country of origin, saying it would be “too much pollution.”

In a tweet, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said he would rather make those responsible for the unwanted importation “miserable for the rest of their natural lives.”

“It is our mission to nail those natives who imported Canadian garbage to our country,” Locsin said.

“However, we reject the suggestion to ship them out in a container of garbage. That’s too much pollution,” he said. 

He did not offer a suggestion on how the country could get rid of the garbage.

Malacañang said it wanted clarification from Locsin.

“I don’t understand. Where will we place the garbage? I think you should address that question to him,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said at a press briefing when told of Locsin’s tweet.

“I’ll ask him if I see him. But I would suggest you ask him directly,” he added.

The Bureau of Customs (BOC) said on Monday they received orders from Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III to return the containers of trash back to Canada by May 15. The garbage arrived in the country in batches beginning in 2013.

The Department of Finance gave the order to the BOC after President Duterte said he would declare “war” on Canada if it would not take back its garbage.

Canada earlier said it was working with the Philippine government for a “timely” resolution of the problem.

“Canada is strongly committed to collaborating with the Philippine government to resolve the waste issue and it is aware of the court decision ordering the importer to ship the garbage back to Canada,” its embassy said in a statement.

A joint technical working group, consisting of officials from both countries, is at present resolving the problem.

The BOC, however, said shipping the garbage back to Canada by May 15 would not be easy as there are issues that need to be addressed, like the hundreds of millions of pesos in unpaid demurrage fees.

The 103 containers of garbage are now in separate locations – Port of Subic, Manila International Container Port (MICP) and in a landfill in Tarlac.

“The pullout of these containers reportedly filled with garbage from Canada is not as easy as it looks. There are issues that have to be decided by both governments (Philippines and Canada),” said BOC-Port of Subic (BOC-POS) district collector Maritess Martin. She said the government should be clear about who would shoulder the shipping cost.

In 2016, Manila regional trial court judge Tita Alisuag ordered the importers to return the garbage to Canada, but Martin said the consignee might already be in hiding.

“When I assumed (the position as POS collector) we already had talks with the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, since the BOC is already requesting for a waiver or to reduce the cost, but SBMA said that it was up to the terminal (Subic Bay International Terminal Corp.),” she said.

She is not sure, she said, if there would be any changes “if President Duterte would order them to consider waiving” the payment of demurrage fees.

Health dangers

The Ecology Center of SBMA is reportedly against the opening of the shipping containers as doing so might lead to health problems.

It was reported earlier that a batch of the garbage shipment consisting of 50 containers had been mis-declared to contain a type of plastic scrap. It was later found out to contain an assortment of scrap plastic materials.

The shipment was consigned to Chronic Plastics, a company based in Valenzuela City. The shipper was listed as Chronic Inc. of Ontario.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, called on both Canada and the Philippines to ratify the Basel Ban Amendment to prevent future illegal dumping in the country.

The measure aims to protect developing countries from getting shipments of “hazardous and other wastes they were unable to manage in an environmentally sound manner, but continued to receive.”

The EcoWaste Coalition stressed that “the dumping of Canadian wastes in the Philippines is immoral and illegal.”

“We have patiently waited for years for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make good on his promise to resolve this long-running dumping controversy,” said Aileen Lucero, national coordinator of EcoWaste Coalition.

“When he first came to Manila in 2015, he said a ‘Canadian solution’ is being developed to address the issue, and when he returned in 2017, he said ‘it is now theoretically possible to get (the wastes) back.’ It’s now second quarter of 2019 and the Canadian wastes are still rotting here,” she said.

“We are fed up with failed promises. Now is the time for Canada to announce when exactly are they taking back their garbage in compliance to its obligations under the Basel Convention. The wastes have nowhere to go but Canada where the wastes have to be processed and treated in an environmentally responsible way,” she added.

Last Monday, members of the group trooped to the Canadian embassy in Makati City to demand the return of the shipment to Canada.  – With Evelyn Macairan, Alexis Romero, Rhodina Villanueva