MANILA, Philippines ?Malacañang has allotted $2.2 million in the proposed 2009 budget to pay for unused incinerators purchased from Austria during the Ramos administration, according to debt watchdog and environmental groups.
?How our government budget came out paying annually for a technology as old as the Quezon government is truly bizarre and one for the books,? said Milo Tanchuling, secretary general of the Freedom from Debt Coalition.
The incinerators, purchased through a P500-million loan from the Bank of Austria, were never used because the technology was subsequently banned by the Clean Air Act of 1999. But the government is continuing and will continue to pay the loan until 2014. The payments are automatically provided for in the yearly budget allotments.
Parañaque Rep. Eduardo Zialcita on Tuesday raised the issue of the incinerators during preliminary deliberations on the Department of Health?s proposed P33.3-billion budget for 2009.
?So we are paying for a technology that is obsolete?? he asked.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque explained that the government was ?bound by the stipulations? of the loan contract with the Bank of Austria.
Banned in Europe
Merci Ferrer, coordinator for the Health Care Without Harm group, said the ?the basic structure of the incinerators provided to the Philippines was a controlled air type model developed in the 1950s.?
The technology had already been banned in many European Union countries even before it was acquired by the Philippine government through the DOH, she claimed.
Tanchuling said the incinerator debt was another ?bizarre? debt that the government has incurred for mothballed projects like the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, the Telepono sa Barangay and the Small Coconut Farmers Development project.
During deliberations for the 2008 budget last year, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, the then chair of the appropriations committee, said the loan was a ?folly.?
?The government continues to pay this useless and toxic loan through automatic appropriation,? he said, noting that interest payments alone amounted to P17.7 million while principal amortization allocation was set at P79.3 million in the 2008 budget proposal. Christian V. Esguerra
