Hauling of Korean wastes in Tingub to Cebu port starts

Trucks prepare to transport the shredded plastic wastes in Barangay Tingub, Manadue City, to the Cebu International Port where they will be loaded to the waiting cargo ship MV Christina.

As the Mandaue City government and other concerned government agencies prepare to file charges against those responsible for bringing the shredded plastic wastes from South Korea into a Barangay Tingub lot, trucks started hauling the estimated 5,000 tons of Korean wastes to the Cebu International Port.

Yesterday, about 30 trucks would be needed to carry the 5,000 tons of the plastic wastes to the Cebu International Port (CIP) where the MV Christine had been docked and would carry them back to South Korea, said Placido Jerusalem of the Mandaue City Environment and Natural Resources Office (MCenro) yesterday.

The MV Christine is the vessel that brought the waste from South Korea to Cebu.

Jerusalem said that the Bureau of Customs declared the substance as synthetic resins in their report and marked by DENR as waste number F699 and is highly hazardous.

Yesterday, the trucks, which started hauling the garbage at 9 a.m., were covered with laminated sacks to avoid the garbage from spilling over and to control the odor as they transported them to the CIP.

Aside from that, the members of the Bureau of Customs and the representatives from Cenro and Traffic Enforcement Agency of Mandaue (Team) escorted the trucks to make sure that the waste would not be thrown elsewhere or would fall off the trucks.

Verne Enciso, chief of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Service (CIIS), said that it would take at least two days to haul the garbage to the vessel.

Jerusalem said once the waste would be loaded to the vessel, and this would leave port, a Philippine Coast Guard vessel would escort the cargo ship with the garbage until it would leave the country’s boundary on its way to the port of Jeju in South Korea.

He said that this would ensure that the garbage would not be thrown in the waters within the country’s area of responsibility.

Mandaue City Mayor Luis Gabriel “Luigi” Quisumbing earlier said that they had partnered with the BOC to make sure that the garbage would be brought back to South Korea.

“My only advice to the owners of the company is to prepare an awful lot of lawyers. From those parties alone, they can expect multiple cases,” said Quisumbing in last Monday’s press briefing.

Quisumbing was referring to Bureau of Customs-Cebu, the Department of Environment of Natural Resources (DENR) 7 and the owner of the 2,000-square-meter lot in Tingub who planned to file cases against the consignee, Moving Forward Global Trading Inc., and the shipper of the wastes, Neogreen.

Quisumbing said the city would file cases against those involved for violation of the provisions of the Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 and for violation of other city ordinances pertaining to the anti-littering laws.

He said the DENR-7 and the BOC-Cebu would also file appropriate charges against those involved while the owner of the lot planned to file a case to the consignee for breach of contract.