MANILA — On an eight-lane highway leading to the House of Representatives, mounds of rubbish packed in colourful plastic bags have been piling up since the start of the new year.

While they appear in cheerful shades of the rainbow — red, yellow, red, green, blue — the bulging bags of rubbish spilling along highways and streets reflect a metropolis caught in a garbage anarchy.

For the legislators who report daily to Congress in their air-conditioned cars, passing through the flanks of garbage is but an optical or traffic inconvenience.

But to ordinary people commuting to work in open jeepneys, the city’s main mode of public transportation, the stinking garbage poses a health hazard.

Already, the health department has warned of a possible epidemic outbreak.

In an emergency meeting on Friday night, Mr Estrada finally intervened in the garbage impasse and issued an order to Metro Manila officials to reopen the suburban San Mateo dump.

He also gave officials an ultimatum to clean up the metropolis within 10 days.

With the ultimatum, dump trucks started rolling down the streets before dawn yesterday to collect garbage that had accumulated on highways and along roadsides.

About 100 trucks loaded with garbage headed to the old dump, but hundreds of residents of the scenic mountain towns of Antipolo and San Mateo immediately put up roadblocks to prevent the trucks from dumping the tonnes of rubbish.

Mr Eleazar Casilag, a community leader, said residents would not allow the reopening of the dump.

In December 1998, thousands of residents also put up similar roadblocks to stop garbage dumping.

Metro Manila s 11 million residents generate 6,000 tonnes of garbage every day.

Only 4,000 tonnes are collected. Undisciplined residents dump the rest into rivers and waterways.

Across the metropolis, mounds of garbage have remained uncollected after a local court halted garbage dumping on Semirara island in Central Philippines.

A portion of an abandoned coalmine on the island was developed late last year as a new sanitary landfill for garbage shipped in barges from Metro Manila starting Jan 1 this year.

The old dump in suburban San Mateo was closed last Dec 31.

Noted political analyst Amando Doronila said the garbage problem had reached crisis proportions "even more alarming than the crisis of confidence in President Joseph Estrada,

mainly because its effect is more immediate than the impeachment trial".

‘The growing garbage mountain is the symbol of the complete breakdown of a basic municipal service."

Presidential aide Robert Aventajado said Mr Estrada’s order to reopen the old San Mateo dumpsite was temporary and would last for about a month to give Manila time to prepare alternative dumpsites.

The President made the politically painful decision because he was worried about the health of Metro Manila residents, Mr Aventajado stressed.

Already, officials are considering eight provinces around Metro Manila as alternative dumpsites, but they admit it will take a minimum of eight months to prepare a permanent sanitary landfill.

Compounding the problem of finding an alternative dumpsite was the strong opposition of local officials running for re-election.

They fear losing in the mid-term elections set in May if they offer part of their provinces as dumpsites, Mr Aventajado said.

-By Arturo Bariuad

Source : The Sunday  Times, Jan 14, 2001

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