Zubiri seeks probe of waste commission

Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri is seeking an investigation into the apparent failure of the National Solid Waste Management Commission to come up with a systematic, comprehensive and ecological program to address the country’s worsening garbage problems that could even lead to a crisis.

Zubiri filed Senate Resolution No. 258 seeking the probe, saying the commission was not able to implement certain provisions of Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.

RA 9003 requires the commission to formulate a national solid waste management framework and set up modern facilities in the country.

It created the commission which should oversee the implementation of solid waste management plans and prescribe policies to achieve the objectives of RA 9003.

“Until today, the National Solid Waste Management Commission has yet to come up with a comprehensive framework for an efficient and ecologically compliant waste management system for Metro Manila and the rest of the country,” Zubiri’s resolution stated.

Zubiri said Metro Manila’s garbage, now estimated at 7,000 metric tons per day, was being dumped in the sanitary landfill in Rizal, an open site not ecologically compliant as envisioned in RA 9003.

Rizal Gov. Casimiro Ynares III earlier announced that at the end of 2007, Metro Manila’s garbage would no longer be allowed to be dumped in the landfill in Rodriguez town.

“Because of the commission’s ineptness and inefficiency, Metro Manila is now confronted with a serious garbage crisis which could cause an unprecedented ecological disaster far worse than the Payatas tragedy in 2000 and possibly as chilling as the plague which visited the city of Surat, in Western India, in 1994,” Zubiri said in his resolution.

After seven years since the enactment of RA 9003, he said only a handful of local government units were able to set up ecologically compliant solid waste management facilities.

“The cumulative damage to the environment, the threat to public health, and the significant social impact caused by the presently inefficient and unsanitary system of garbage disposal and collection are unquantifiable,” the resolution stated.

“The commission miserably failed to fulfill its mandate for the closure of open dumps in 2004 and the controlled dumps by 2006 and to establish fully operational sanitary landfills by 2006 throughout the country,” Zubiri said.

Zubiri said officials of the commission, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, National Economic Development Authority and other concerned government agencies should be invited to the investigation.