THE Department of Finance (DOF) has ordered the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to look into the creation of a strike team that will guard the country’s borders against the possible entry of waste materials from other countries.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the DOF quoted Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III as saying, after issuing the directive to Customs Commissioner Rey Leonardo B. Guerrero, “It’s time we put up something like an environmental unit in the Customs [bureau] to really act on this garbage issue.”
The directive was issued at a recent DOF Executive Committee (Execom) meeting after Guerrero reported that he had called on his counterparts in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to strengthen the law-enforcement capabilities of member-states not only in the war against drug trafficking, but also in preventing the region from being a dumping ground for hazardous materials such as garbage of other countries.
Guerrero said his fellow customs officials from the Asean reacted positively to his proposal.
The finance chief said the strike team that he wants at the BOC will be like a special environmental strike force team that will be activated to guard against the entry of hazardous materials in the country.
The Customs chief also told Dominguez that other Asean member-states like Malaysia thanked the Philippines during the 28th meeting of the Asean Directors General of Customs held at the Lao Republic for setting the example in the region. This, after President Duterte stood pat in his decision to compel Canada to immediately repatriate 69 containers of trash that were dumped in Manila six years ago.
After Canada failed to meet the original May 15 deadline set by President Duterte for the return of the imported wastes, the government recalled its ambassador and consuls to Canada to demonstrate its “diminished diplomatic relations” with the North American country.
This action prompted Canada to move its earlier June 30 commitment in repatriating the waste to the Philippines’s revised May 30 deadline.
“Malaysia was thanking the Philippines for setting the example [on dealing with] this problem about the waste, because now it has come to the consciousness of the international community, this garbage problem,” Guerrero said.
Guerrero pointed out that as a result of President Duterte’s tough stand on the issue, he has received reports that plans to have other shipments of waste transported to the country have now been scuttled.
Beating the deadline set by the government, the 69 containers of waste from Canada mislabeled by a private importer as recyclable materials and dumped in the Philippines six years ago were finally shipped out of the country last May 31.