Environmental health and justice activists call for the non-payment of the controversial Austrian loan agreement for obsolete and highly polluting medical waste incinerators.
Quezon City. The EcoWaste Coalition, an advocacy group for environmental health and justice, commiserates with the people of Albay and the entire nation for the demise of human rights defender and congressional representative Edcel Lagman who passed away last January 30.
“We join hands with other public interest groups in paying tribute to Rep. Edcel Lagman for his life-long service to the people and the nation,” said Aileen Lucero, National Coordinator, EcoWaste Coalition. “Known to many as a man of principle and action, Rep. Lagman valiantly fought for causes meant to defend human dignity, rectify injustice and uplift people’s lives, including the cancellation of illegitimate debts.”
“We remember with utmost gratitude the help extended by Rep. Lagman in bringing the failed Austrian medical waste incinerator project to the attention of his fellow lawmakers, and the justness of cancelling the debt payments during the difficult period of global financial crisis in 2007-2009,” said Ronnel Lim, lead author of the study “Toxic Debt: The Onerous Austrian Legacy of Medical Waste in the Philippines.” Lim, a Bicolano like Lagman, is now Mayor of Gubat, Sorsogon.
The EcoWaste Coalition had the opportunity of collaborating with Rep. Lagman, as well as with then Akbayan Partylist Representative and currently Senator Risa Hontiveros, in pushing for the cancellation of interest and principal payments for the controversial medical waste project together with the Stop Toxic Debt! Campaign involving the Freedom from Debt Coalition, EcoWaste Coalition, Health Care Without Harm-Asia, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, and Greenpeace Southeast Asia, which also published a report “Bad Medicine” criticizing the dumping of obsolete Austrian medical waste incinerators in the name of development assistance.
The Stop Toxic Debt! Campaign specifically advocated for the cancellation of the annual payments of roughly two million US dollars for 26 polluting medical waste incinerators purchased by the Department of Health (DOH) through a 1997 loan agreement with Austria costing over PHP500 million. At one point, Lagman and Hontiveros led a petition to the Austrian parliament to have the said loan cancelled.
After failing government-commissioned emission tests and as the ban on medical waste incineration under the Clean Air Act took effect in 2003, the 26 incinerators were eventually shut down. However, annual payment continued until 2014.
The EcoWaste Coalition further thanked Lagman for supporting the position taken by “BANtay Endosulfan” (Endosulfan Watch) regarding the immediate re-export of some 10 tons of the highly-toxic pesticide endosulfan retrieved from the ill-fated MV Princess of the Stars, which sank off the coast of Sibuyan Island in Romblon Province in 2008 killing 814 people.
BANtay Endosulfan pushed for immediate “return to sender,” arguing that photo and video documentation and other pertinent certifications and records should be admissible in court as evidence. Lagman agreed, emphasizing “you need not preserve the body of a murder victim in the morgue to prove the crime.”
In 2011 a global ban on endosulfan was agreed by parties to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) due to this pesticide’s demonstrated persistence, bioaccumulation, potential for long-range transport and adverse health effects.
As per announcement of Lagman’s family, interment will be on February 10 at the Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina City after the 8:30 am funeral mass at the Mt. Carmel Shrine in Quezon City.
References:
https://ecowastecoalition.blogspot.com/2008/10/solons-seek-cancellation-of-austrian.html
https://www.ecowastecoalition.org/greens-debt-activists-urge-solons-to/
https://ecowastecoalition.blogspot.com/2007/10/groups-demand-cancellation-of-toxic.html
https://www.ecowastecoalition.org/immediate-return-of-endosulfan-to/
