Thursday, July 03, 2008 Mortuary ‘throws’ Sulpicio wastes in Talisay, irks City
TALISAY City Government is taking a legal action against the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes for indiscriminately throwing hazardous wastes in a mountain village Tuesday night.
The thrown items were not ordinary household garbage, as these were remnants of the retrieval operations of the mv Princess of the Stars tragedy.
Found at the site were more than 40 black garbage bags bearing surgical masks, gloves, disposable styrofoams, human hair, white powder and a blue laboratory gown with words Pacific Center for Mortuary Studies.
The Talisay Rescue Emergency Action Team (Treat), headed by Dr. Lino Alanzado, believed that these items were used during forensic examinations of the cadavers at Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes in Cebu City.
Affirmation
But what was more shocking was that some plastics contained body bags and orange life vests with markings mv Princess of the Stars, an affirmation that these were used by the passengers of the ill-fated Sulpicio Lines vessel.
The Treat suspected that the body bags were the ones used by rescuers to wrap the corpses plucked from the seas off Romblon, the site where the mv Princess of the
Stars capsized last June 21.
Residents reportedly spotted an L300 van whose personnel dumped the junks by the roadside past 11 p.m. at a boundary of Barangays Maghaway and Linao, only a few meters away from the Talisay City Jail.
Treat members and reporters had to use masks because of heavy stench emanating from the exposed items of the thrown plastic bags.
Upon seeing the garbage, Alanzado immediately phoned Rony Ng, Cebu City Cosmopolitan manager, and demanded the latter to immediately collect the items.
“You’re lying to me Ron, you have to pick it up now,” Alanzado was overheard as saying while talking to Ng on the phone.
Reporters learned that Alanzado, also city health office chief, already called up Ng at City Hall before he visited the area past 3 p.m.
The Cosmopolitan official strongly denied then that the thrown garbage were theirs because the body bags were part of the forensic evidence.
Sought for comment, Ng admitted that he erred when he first denied to Alanzado about the dumped garbage.
Establishment
He said the establishment would conduct an in-house inquiry to determine who among its personnel were responsible for throwing the garbage in Talisay.
Ng also admitted that those were not ordinary wastes because body bags and other items were supposed to be torched at the incinerator after examination by forensic experts.
He said he apologized to City Administrator Richel Bacaltos for the lapses, which he considered as unintentional, when they talked over the phone late in the afternoon.
Ng said all the thrown materials were already retrieved from the site at press time yesterday.
For his part, Mayor Socrates Fernandez said he would meet Alanzado and Legal Officer Owen Algoso today to determine the City’s legal move against the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes.
“It’s hazardous to human health, plants and the surroundings in the area. They’re not supposed to throw that here,” Fernandez said.
Sun.Star Cebu tried to contact Alanzado last night for specific violations of the Cosmopolitan but to no avail.
Councilor Serrie Restauro, a former head of the City Council committee on health, said the indiscriminate throwing of medical wastes is a clear violation of the local Health and Sanitation Code. (GC)
