EDITORIAL - How not to solve the garbage problem

When the Cebu City Environmental Sanitation Enforcement Team or Ceset was reported as having fined 105 garbage personnel for failing to segregate garbage and for not securing their loads of garbage with restraining covers or netting, the immediate tendency is to applaud the sanctions loudly. After all, it is in the interest of everybody for garbage to be segregated, and for garbage not to be falling all over the streets from garbage trucks.

But that is only the immediate tendency. In the end, nobody feels like applauding. The fines -- P500 for each "violator" -- make for an arm with the leg thrown in for a garbage employee, whose take-home pay is probably less than the value of the garbage that fell of his truck on the way to the dump. That the law is hard but it is the law should have been waived in favor of humanitatian considerations.

These "erring" garbage personnel are not true law-breakers. They are just victims of the society in which they live in. There are better and more practical ways to make them toe the line without having to unduly punish them and their innocent families, families that they sustain from what small earnings they make from risking their health handling other people's refuse.

Maybe all that these garbage personnel need is proper orientation and motivation in the collection, handling and disposal of garbage. Before Ceset all too quickly slapped the 105 "erring" employees with hefty fines (P500 is already unimaginably hefty for them), and all because some motorist in his airconditioned car saw some trash falling off a garbage truck, maybe it should have done a little background checking first.

Perhaps it might interest Ceset to find out if the garbage trucks and their crew are equipped with the right and proper tools and accessories to ensure that garbage collection is safe, sanitary and efficient. Maybe it might try to see if garbage personnel have been properly educated and trained to do and handle the kind of work that they do.

Maybe Ceset should have considered the fact that, more often than not, non-segregation is a problem that goes back to households and that, under great pressure to do away with the huge volumes of garbage generated daily, the lowly, improperly trained and poorly equipped garbage personnel are perhaps driven to take shortcuts just to try and beat the odds in performing their thankless jobs.

The garbage problem has many factors and involves many players. Just because garbage collectors and garbage truck drivers are the most visible of the players and the most defenseless in any hunt for scapegoats doesn't mean they have to get the squeeze each time it becomes necessary to put on a show. It is tough enough to make a living handling garbage without government having to be inconsiderate and insensitive. If it wants to crack the whip, it should go after the real culprits.