No more landfill excuses

WE saw it happen in Smokey Mountain at the capital Metro Manila in 2000. Just last month, it was in Baguio City, touted as the Summer Capital of the Philippines. The man-made catastrophe of collapsing heaps of garbage from dumpsites, killing people and destroying homes, is the worst eventuality there is but tragedy is actually happening for every day that sanitary landfills are not pursued by local government units as mandated under the law.

The repeated lame excuse by LGU officials that sanitary landfills are expensive to build – estimates range between P20 million to as much as P100 million – and funds are not available is a reflection of a lazy and uncreative kind of leadership. If there is political will, there is a way.

Governor Amado Espino Jr., also an environment envoy and has proven himself to be an action man, should take the lead now. Espino can initiate a meeting of the heads of the 44 municipalities and four cities in the province, together with the six congressional representatives and the members of the Liga ng mga Barangay, to draw up plans on how the province – in clusters and led by those that already have landfills or alternative health-and-eco-friendly disposal systems – can comply with the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of the Philippines under Republic Act No. 9003. (If there is no fund in the provincial budget for such a huge gathering, why not make it a bring-your-own-baon or a potluck event? That would be one way for our public servants to show their commitment and resolve to sort out our garbage.)

Sanitary landfills, complemented by strictly-implemented waste management policies, are intended to minimize the impact of all the rubbish that we produce on the environment. The Environmental Management Bureau has issued warnings against non-complying LGUs and there are sanctions that could be imposed against them. But never mind the sanctions. Our local public servants, if they really wanted to make it their priority, can construct the required landfills simply out of a basic sense of responsibility to their communities and the environment – one of the best ways of showing that they do love Pangasinan.

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One for civil rights

GAY-SOLDIERS can now openly come out into the open as members of the US military. After the US Congress voted in December to lift the ban on “third-sex” soldiers, military officials last week declared a review of policies on its 2.25 million service members to ensure a smooth transition.

The 1993 American law, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” had required gay and lesbian troops to keep quiet about their sexual orientation or face expulsion from the force. On Wednesday, Sept. 21, that law that had expelled 14,000 or so service members from the force since 1993 had been repealed.

The action was in unison to a military-backed survey that found most troops saying allowing openly gay soldiers to serve would not cause any major disruption in the military. The repeal was a major victory as well for the civil rights movement around the world, including the Philippines.

We couldn’t agree more.

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