By LiCAS.news
PHILIPPINES – A faith-based labor group in the Philippines has condemned the deadly collapse of a massive garbage mound in Cebu City as a crime against workers, while authorities said hopes of finding survivors were fading days after the disaster.
In a statement, Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlos, chairperson of Church People–Workers Solidarity (CWS), said the collapse of the Binaliw Landfill was being wrongly portrayed as an accident when it was “in truth, a crime born of greed, neglect, and the systematic violation of workers’ rights”.
The privately operated landfill collapsed on Thursday, burying sanitation workers under tons of trash that toppled from an estimated height of 20 storeys.
Authorities said the recovery of a body on Sunday brought the confirmed death toll to seven, with at least 29 workers still missing as the critical 72-hour window since the landslide ended.
About 50 sanitation workers were buried when the mountain of garbage gave way at the site, which handles refuse for Cebu City’s nearly one million residents.
“Yesterday, we detected two signs of life through our specialised radar. There were still heartbeats 30 meters (98 feet) below the debris, but right now, there are no reports of that anymore,” local fire officer Wendell Villanueva told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday.
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