Environmental group Ecowaste Coalition today asked the government to provide hazard pay for Filipino garbage collectors, whose health has become at risk due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement posted on the group’s blog, Ecowaste said they sent a letter to four high-ranking government officials to convince them to make the proposal possible. They said that the hazard pay should start from March 17 until the Luzon lockdown ends, which has been moved to April 30. President Rodrigo Duterte has authorized the grant of hazard pay to government employees who report for work during the quarantine, but Ecowaste said this may not apply to garbage collectors because they are hired by companies who have been contracted by a local government unit.
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“As frontliners from the environmental sector in the country’s determined efforts to prevent and control COVID-19, we believe that garbage collectors are entitled to hazard pay — regardless of their employment status — due to the risks they face in the performance of essential waste management services, which can be considered hazardous, especially under the extraordinary circumstances brought about by the coronavirus outbreak,” said Eileen Sison, Ecowaste’s president.
“Without their indispensable service, we may be faced with even more environmental and health hazards from uncollected waste,” she added.
The coalition said the increasing number of hazardous waste being disposed of by hospitals, as well as the absence of regulations that guide Filipinos on how they could properly throw out their garbage, makes the hazard pay necessary. In its statement, the group said they asked the four government officials to “use moral suasion to strongly encourage employers of garbage collectors — be they private companies or LGUs — to grant them daily hazard pay” during the lockdown.
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“Such action will be in sync with Republic Act 11469, or the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, particularly on the ‘provision of safety nets to all affected sectors’ of COVID-19,” the group said, and added that the money can be taken from the local government’s social amelioration or disaster fund.
The Philippines dumps millions of plastic each day, and according to a 2017 Greenpeace study, the country is the world’s third-biggest source of plastic ocean pollution. The country’s reliance on plastic stems from the practice of buying products in small amounts (called tingi), which is cheaper than buying them in bulk.
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