Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has directed the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to look into the creation of a special strike team to guard against the entry of waste materials that other countries may attempt to dump in the Philippines.
Dominguez said the strike team is akin to a special environmental strike force team activated to guard against the entry of hazardous materials into the country.
Dominguez’s directive came after Customs commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero reported that he called on his Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) counterparts to strengthen law enforcement capabilities of the organization’s member-states not only in the war against drug trafficking but also in preventing the region from becoming a dumping ground for garbage and hazardous materials of other countries.
Guerrero said his fellow ASEAN customs officials reacted positively to his proposal, the Department of Finance (DOF) said in a statement.
In response, Dominguez said “it’s time we put up something like an environmental unit in the Customs (bureau) to really act on this garbage issue.”
DOF noted Canada’s re-exportation just last month of its 69 containers of garbage that were shipped to the Philippines six years ago.
Other ASEAN countries like Malaysia and Cambodia are also working to have wastes dumped in their countries returned to Canada, DOF said.
“Malaysia was thanking the Philippines for setting the example, this problem about the wastes, because now it has come to the consciousness of the international community, this garbage problem,” Guerrero said.
The South Korean government has also committed to help ship back some 5,176 metric tons of waste materials illegally imported into the Philippines last year and currently stored at the PHIVIDEC Industrial Authority premises in Misamis Oriental.
As a result of President Rodrigo Duterte’s stand on the issue, Guerrero claimed he received reports that plans to transport other waste shipments to the Philippines have been scuttled.
