Mathay bans children from Payatas dumpsite

Quezon City Mayor Ismael Mathay Jr. issued an order yesterday banning children from scavenging at the Payatas dump.

"Mothers should entrust their children at the nearby day-care center before they will be allowed to enter the dump and look for recyclables," Mathay told Bobby Jaymalin, who heads the Task Force Payatas.

Mathay’s order came in the wake of yet another accident at the dump, when a slide hit a mountain of smoldering garbage Friday, burying alive 16-year-old scavenger Roggee Baliwas. The teenager’s remains have yet to be found.

Last Monday, Mathay held a dialogue with leaders of Sanlakas, a militant group which picketed city hall and denounced Mathay’s alleged failure to make good his promises of livelihood for residents of depressed communities around the dump.

A trash-slide last July 10 at the dump killed at least 234 people and injured several others. Then President Estrada ordered the dump closed but Mathay interceded for a temporary transfer station beside the collapsed dump while the city has yet to find an alternative dumping site.

He said the city’s garbage trucks cannot make the long haul to the re-commissioned San Mateo landfill without a transfer station. Urban poor groups opposed the plan, saying the city government was courting another disaster by reopening the Payatas dump.

Mathay, however, explained the city government has no choice but to dump garbage in Payatas, considering that the national government’s plan to open a landfill at the Semirara Island in Antique for Metro Manila’s garbage has hit legal snags.

As it is, garbage has become a thorny issue for Mathay, who is on his last term as mayor. Militant groups are using the Payatas incidents as an election issue against the elder Mathay, who hopes to pass on the mayorship to his son Chuck in the May 2001 elections.