Firm to foot medical bills amid ash complaints

Are the health problems of residents in Limay, Bataan, caused by ashfall or spill from a byproduct storage facility being used by San Miguel Corp. (SMC) subsidiaries?

That will be settled once and for all by a study to be conducted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

Environment Secretary Gina Lopez asked anticoal plant protesters and Bataan residents on Wednesday to give the DENR a week to coordinate with the health department to validate the complaints.

Limay residents, particularly those in Barangay Lamao, started complaining late last year of skin and respiratory diseases, as well as pollution in the air, rivers and coastlines, blaming them on windblown and soil-seeping ash allegedly from the stockpile of byproducts from the SMC Consolidated Power Corp. (SMCCPC) plant and a coal-fired plant of the Petron Bataan fuel refinery. Both are subsidiaries of SMC.

“We follow scientific processes committed to integrity. … Give us one week. I have to follow due process but I want to tell you my heart is for you,” Lopez told the protesters.

The DENR had earlier ordered the plants to stop dumping ash on the shared stockpile.

Derek Cabe, of the Nuclear-Free Bataan Movement and the Coal-Free Central Luzon, who has been coordinating closely with the affected communities, said the “best-seller” medicines of local drugstores were for respiratory ailments.

“We noticed that started when the plants started to operate, and now it’s been getting worse. Where else would you attribute the diseases?” Cabe said.

SMC president Ramon S. Ang denied the illnesses had been caused by the plants. He said he visited the area this week and saw “no smoke, no pollution there.”

“A lot of these things, like those pictures being shown of galis (scabies), are hearsay,” Ang said, when Lopez called him up and put him on speakerphone to address the protesters’ complaints.

“I will not allow anybody to suffer,” Ang said. “Please tell them not to jump to conclusions. If it’s scabies, don’t blame it on us. Nevertheless, I will pay for it, whether it’s scabies, whatever their illnesses are.” —WITH ALLAN MACATUNO, TONETTE OREJAS AND GREG REFRACCION