The Philippine government will file a diplomatic protest with the Canadian government over imports of solid wastes from Canada.
This after the Bureau of Customs (BOC) on July 30 filed smuggling charges at the Department of Justice against Nelson Manio, owner and proprietor of Live Green Enterprises based at the Clark Freeport Zone, Pampanga, for unlawfully importing from Vancouver, Canada 48 forty five-foot containers of municipal solid wastes misdeclared as plastic scraps.
Under the law, only homogeneous plastic scrap materials are allowed into the country as regulated imports, but these must have a pre-shipment importation clearance from the Environmental Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
On July 27, the DENR and BOC jointly asked the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to file a diplomatic protest with the Canadian Embassy to avoid “a repeat of the unfortunate incident and enjoin the government of Canada to revisit their domestic regulations on the export or illegal traffic in waste,” Foreign Affairs spokesperson assistant secretary Charles Jose said.
The DFA will file a third diplomatic note to the Canadian embassy after the department receives technical information from the DENR and BOC, Jose said. The DFA previously sent two diplomatic notes about the waste to the Canadian Embassy.
In those notes, the Philippines asked the Canadian government to assist with the reexport of the container vans to Canada. But the Canadian Embassy has said Canada had no domestic laws to compel the shipper to take back the containers.
The DENR had decided to dispose of the waste in a sanitary landfill in Tarlac, pointing out that the trash was residual and municipal solid waste was neither hazardous nor toxic.
Aside from the smuggling charge it faces, Live Green Enterprises’ Customs accreditation will be cancelled, according to Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina.
Live Green Enterprise is charged with violating Section 3601 of the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines, as amended, in relation to DENR Administrative Order 1994-28 entitled “Interim Guidelines in the Importation of Recyclable Material Containing Hazardous Substances.”
The shipments were discovered by BOC last May when Lina instructed all ports to submit an inventory of all overstaying cargoes.
The shipments’ exporter has been identified as a certain Demetrios Jim Makris of Chronic Inc. Canada, the same exporter of 55 containers of heterogeneous wastes discovered last year consigned to Chronic Plastics. This caused BOC to suspect contents of the latest shipments.
Customs had filed similar charges at the DOJ against the owner and customs brokers of Chronic Plastics last February 2014 and the case is now pending with the courts.
Lina said Chronic Plastics’ Customs accreditation will also be cancelled.
An analysis of the composition of the wastes conducted by EMB last June 3 revealed that the containers held non-hazardous “municipal solid wastes” of used mixed and unsorted or “heterogeneous” wastes, including household and street garbage.
“This is a wakeup call for all of us. It is very clear that these waste materials were shipped to the Philippines illegally,” Lina said in a statement. “That is why we have filed the necessary case against Live Green Enterprises, to make sure that those responsible for importing these waste materials be punished in accordance with the law.”
Image courtesy of watiporn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
