A faith-based labor group in the Philippines has condemned the deadly collapse of a massive garbage mound in Cebu City as a crime against workers, while authorities said hopes of finding survivors were fading days after the disaster.
In a statement, Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlos, chairperson of Church People–Workers Solidarity (CWS), said the collapse of the Binaliw Landfill was being wrongly portrayed as an accident when it was “in truth, a crime born of greed, neglect, and the systematic violation of workers’ rights”.
The privately operated landfill collapsed on Thursday, burying sanitation workers under tons of trash that toppled from an estimated height of 20 storeys.
Authorities said the recovery of a body on Sunday brought the confirmed death toll to seven, with at least 29 workers still missing as the critical 72-hour window since the landslide ended.
About 50 sanitation workers were buried when the mountain of garbage gave way at the site, which handles refuse for Cebu City’s nearly one million residents.
“Yesterday, we detected two signs of life through our specialised radar. There were still heartbeats 30 meters (98 feet) below the debris, but right now, there are no reports of that anymore,” local fire officer Wendell Villanueva told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday.
Villanueva said it was unlikely “for people to still be alive” three days after “tons of debris and trash had collapsed over them.” So far, 12 workers have been pulled out alive and hospitalised.
Rescue efforts have been repeatedly interrupted by the risk of further collapse from the still-shifting mountain of refuse, a danger worsened by rain, Villanueva said.
In a phone interview with AFP, he said the focus was expected to shift from rescue to recovery on Monday, although the final decision would be made by an inter-agency team.
A public information officer separately said the operation was likely to move toward recovering bodies.
Outside the disaster site, dozens of family members waited under tents to shield themselves from the sun as they watched the rescue operations.
“What we want now is to find them. Alive or dead — so we can properly take care of them,” said Jezille Matabid, whose brother Junelle, a welder at the landfill, was among those missing.
Another woman, who declined to give her name, said the lack of information about her older sister, a landfill employee, had been agonising.
“We feel like we’re going crazy here just waiting for an update. She’s three-months pregnant,” she said.
Elmer Aguilar, whose brother Larry was also missing, said he and others came hoping to help in the search but were barred from the site.
“We went here because we thought we could help dig, but when we arrived, the guards did not allow us to enter,” he said.
Cebu City council member Joel Garganera described the height of the garbage pile as “alarming,” estimating it stood 20 storeys above the area struck. He said the danger should have been obvious.
“Every now and then, when it rains, there are landslides happening around the city,” he said, adding that “a landfill or a mountain that is made of garbage” posed particular risks.
“The garbage is like a sponge, it really absorbs water. It doesn’t (take) a rocket scientist to say that eventually, the incident will happen,” Garganera said, calling the collapse a “double whammy” for the city because the facility was the lone service provider for Cebu and nearby communities.
Police images showed a massive mound of trash towering behind buildings that officials said housed administrative offices and worker accommodations.
Cebu Mayor Nestor Archival told local media that a recent earthquake and typhoon-driven rains may have contributed to the collapse.
According to the website of operator Prime Integrated Waste Solutions, the landfill processes about 1,000 tons of municipal solid waste daily. Calls to the company went unanswered on Sunday.
In its statement, CWS said the workers who died were “compelled to work under dangerous and inhumane conditions—conditions that should never have been allowed and that ultimately cost them their lives”.
“As Church, we affirm that work is sacred because the worker is sacred,” the group said, warning that when safety is sacrificed for profit and negligence results in death, “human dignity is gravely violated and work is reduced to exploitation”.
CWS demanded an “immediate, thorough, and transparent investigation” into the collapse and called for the operator to be investigated for possible violations of occupational safety and health laws. “We refuse to allow this tragedy to be reduced to a statistic or buried under official excuses,” the statement said.
“Justice for the victims of the Binaliw Landfill collapse—now. Justice for workers—always,” it added. – with reports from Agence France-Presse
