Worker in war on aerial spray cries harassment

DAVAO CITY—A former banana plantation worker who claimed he became blind because of exposure to pesticides complained of harassment after joining an environmental lobby group that has been seeking a congressional ban on aerial spraying in the country.

Felixberto Batuhan, 49, said that since joining the Mamamayan Ayaw sa Aerial Spraying (MAAS), strangers had become regular visitors to his house and have been asking his wife why he won’t shut his mouth.

MAAS was instrumental in the ban on aerial spraying that the Davao City council passed in 2007. With its local success, MAAS started lobbying for a similar ban that would cover all plantations in the country.

Batuhan, who used to work in a banana plantation here in the 1990s, said the harassment against him did not dampen his desire to join the call for a ban on aerial spraying.

He said he had experienced being soaked in chemicals during aerial spraying and this, he said, was behind his sudden blindness.

Batuhan said banana companies have no regard for the health of the people.

He also said that as a former flag man, he was once scolded by a plantation officer because he refused to give a go signal to a spray plane to start dumping chemicals over the plantation he was working in.

Batuhan said he refused to give the go signal because children were in the plantation at the time but the officer did not listen.

“Sometimes, children used to go to school wet from spray chemicals and were asked by their teachers to go home and change clothes,” he said.

Batuhan said the pressure brought by his joining MAAS has intensified the past few days.

He said his brother, who also works in a banana plantation, even chided him for joining the group in their Manila campaign against aerial spraying.

“He asked me why I was again participating in the campaign,” Batuhan said.

He said he already expected negative reactions back home when he decided to join a MAAS delegation to Congress during the budget deliberations for the Department of Agriculture.

“True enough, the first thing my wife told me was that strangers came, asking why I couldn’t keep my mouth shut,” Batuhan said.

But he added the pressures would not change his mind. Germelina Lacorte, Inquirer Mindanao