Informal settlers blames for Manila Bay pollution

Manila Bay remained unfit for swimming because of high-level pollution caused by trash and other kinds of waste dumped by illegal settlers in Metro Manila, Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu said on Tuesday.

In an interview, Cimatu said the national government was looking at resettling “thousands of families” of informal settlers living along the banks of Metro Manila’s main rivers and their tributaries, as well as the coastal communities of Manila Bay.

“We are meeting with local governments and other agencies, and we will try to figure out how we will go about this because it’s not that simple,” Cimatu said.

“We’re talking of thousands of families here,” he said on the sidelines of this year’s Community Based Forest Management Practitioners Congress.