Tuesday, April 15, 2008 Kin seeks justice for Rowena del Rosario By Ian Ocampo Flora
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- It was almost two months ago when nine-year-old Rowena Del Rosario and her five friends, on their way home from school, decided to pick up some candies from a cooperative’s dumping site in Barangay Del Rosario here.
Del Rosario and her friends, along with other kids in the village, have been doing the same routine. They were unmindful that the “free” candies were possibly contaminated with the pungent toxic sludge.
The site was one of the many locations where the Del Rosario Cooperative has been reportedly dumping and burning wastes from the Universal Robina Corporation (URC) plant.
The sites have been attracting children since the waste contained discarded candies that allegedly did not pass the quality control requirements. These “goodies” were unwittingly mixed with waste from materials used in the manufacturing of other products of URC.
Del Rosario, after gathering a handful of candies, tried to reach for a few more when she accidentally stepped into one of the burning stacks of waste. Both of her legs were burned, her screams sent her classmates running for help. This happened last February 21.
“My friends ran away and left me,” the teary-eyed del Rosario recalled. She was barely conscious when she was rescued.
The girl sustained second and third degree burns. She will remain incapacitated for six months and is in urgent need of medical attention. She has stopped schooling since the accident happened.
Jerry, the victim’s father who works as a welder, said they have called the attention of Barangay Del Rosario chairman Enerito Sazon and the cooperative regarding the accident but no help was extended to them.
Del Rosario is being helped by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). However, her doctors say that the victim would need more serious medical attention for her burns and to conquer the trauma caused by the accident.
“We hope that the local government could look into this so that other kids would not be victimized. “We are only poor but we want action done on these dump sites,” Jerry said in the vernacular.
“I want to walk again and go to school,” the girl told Sun.Star recently.
