MANILA – The Interior department will look into the allegation that local governments were not relocating informal settlers along Metro Manila’s waterways.
“Pai-imbestigahan ko lahat iyan (I will have them investigated),” said Undersecretary for Barangay Affairs Martin Diño, chairman of the Manila Bay Rehabilitation.
Diño wants to find out if top local government officials – barangay captains, mayors, and governors –are performing their duty to relocate informal settler families away from dangerous waterways.
On Monday he attributed the pollution and clogging of creeks and rivers to the proliferation of informal settlers and the lack of proper waste management.
Massive flooding, especially during the wet season, happens because of the failure to strictly carry out Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, he stressed.
“There is a law, RA (Republic Act) 9003, wherein [local government] officials (are) supposed to be taking care of the waterways,” he said.
The law provides for a “systematic, comprehensive, and ecological solid waste management program that ensures the protection of public health and the environment, and the proper segregation, collection, transport, storage and disposal of solid waste through the formulation and adoption of best environmental practices.”
While the public have responsibilities under this law, local government officials are tasked to impose penalties for violations, said the Interior department official.
“We will suspend them” if they are not performing their mandate, Diño said. “I will recommend that a case be filed against them before the Ombudsman for gross negligence of duty.” (PNA)
