The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) extends its deepest condolences to the families, friends and co-workers of the six reported dead workers, as of this writing, in the collapse of a mountain of garbage in Binaliw Landfill in Cebu City. At the same time, we are calling on the government to work overtime to rescue the 32 landfill workers who were buried and remain missing to this day.

Our hearts are heavy. This is a tragedy that was waiting to happen. The mountain of garbage has already reached almost 20 storeys high, and the strong earthquake and typhoons that hit Cebu in the previous months have surely loosened the soil in the landfill, as these have caused landslides in the province in the past. The Binaliw Landfill has been the subject of numerous complaints over the years, including the height of the garbage pile that it is keeping.

The landfill collapse exposes the criminal culpability of Prime Integrated Waste Solutions, a private company owned by billionaire Enrique “Rico” Razon Jr., and of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). The Cebu City government claims that it has monitored the dangers posed by the landfill and has filed complaints about these before the DENR.

The Payatas tragedy in 2000, which killed 218 people, already showed us that allowing a mountain of garbage to rise non-stop is most dangerous to people’s lives. Once a mountain of garbage collapses, it is terribly difficult to recover people who will be buried under. This fact could only mean that labor, sanitary and environmental standards should really be strictly observed in these sanitary landfills. Clearly employers and the government have not learned lessons from Payatas.

We know the profile of workers who work in sanitary landfills. They are some of the poorest Filipinos and suffer some of the worst working conditions, even as they perform jobs that are crucial to the economy. The Binaliw Landfill is Cebu City’s only landfill, and the landfill collapse is now a huge source of problems for the city. Yet the death of landfill workers now seems to be the logical conclusion of the poor working conditions that they have been enduring.

The landfill collapse, its casualties, and the difficulty in rescuing the missing workers all expose weaknesses in the DENR and DOLE’s monitoring over the workplace and enforcement of relevant sanitation, environmental and labor standards. These also expose nothing less than the greed of Prime Integrated Water Solutions and Razon, who amass huge profits but refused to uphold their workers’ right to a safe workplace.

We demand that the Ferdinand Marcos Jr government investigate the accountability of Prime Integrated Water Solutions, the DENR and the DOLE in the disaster, that the results be made known to the public, and that key officials responsible for the tragedy be held into account. We demand the immediate DOLE and DENR inspection of all major landfills in the country, prioritizing those in areas that have been hit hard by typhoons, and publicizing the inspection results.

The Binaliw Landfill collapse further exposes the need to criminalize employers’ violations of occupational health and safety standards that result in workers’ deaths in the workplace. We are calling on the country’s legislators to look into proposed amendments to the country’s Occupational Safety and Health Law (Republic Act 11058) which at present lacks teeth in exacting accountability from employers who have demonstrated criminal neglect that lead to workers’ deaths.