German group fights BCDA and CDC over waste collection contract

THIS situation when companies don’t get what they want, and they sue government, even the officials of agencies that refuse their demand, is so so familiar in the country that such cases have often delayed the putting up of important infrastructure for years.

This case though could threaten garbage collection in Clark, at least according to the news site rappler.com, which has defended the waste management firm’s refusal to end its landfill contract with government.

The Bases’ Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) in charge of developing the former US military bases in the country, especially the sprawling Clark Airbase, had told Metro Clark Waste Management Corp. (Metro Waste) in April that it would not extend for another 25 years its contract for the firm to dump the garbage collected in a 100-hectare Kalangitan Sanitary Landfill in Capas, Tarlac. (Metro Waste appears to be owned by former Kuok executive Robert Kuok and German firms Ingenieuburo Birkhann+Nolte GmbH and Heers & Brockstedt GmbH & Co. Kg., represented by BN Consultants Philippines Inc.)

The BCDA, as well as the Clark Development Corp. (CDC), said it planned to develop the area around the landfill for commercial and industrial use.

After all, demand for such land had boomed not only in Clark but in the Greater Angeles City area. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) offered three existing facilities in Pampanga that may be utilized upon the end of the waste company’s contract, which have a total combined capacity of 11,000 MT of garbage. This is more than enough to address the solid waste management requirements of Tarlac, Pampanga and other provinces in and around the region.

Metro Waste refused. Instead it sued officers of the BCDA and CDC at the Ombudsman for “grave misconduct and a conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service.” Unknown to most people outside government, that’s a company’s “declaration of war” against a government agency’s decision that is not to their liking.

Personal

Under the law, government officials have to use their own personal funds to defend themselves in such graft cases. If an official weren’t corrupt, he’d end his government career in utter poverty. Worst of all, the Ombudsman has a track record of issuing arrest orders, even when the accused has not been given a chance to defend himself or herself.

Worse, Metro Waste launched a propaganda campaign, with the online news site rappler.com at the forefront, to portray the BCDA and CDC as ending their lease in order to favor at least 10 waste management companies to undertake the waste management and disposal of more than 150 local government units (LGUs) without any public bidding.

On the flimsy excuse that relevant documents showing this might be destroyed, the company asked the Ombudsman to suspend top officials of the two government agencies, two of whom — former defense secretary Delfin Lorenzana and former presidential legal counsel Agnes Devanadera — have not had in their many decades of service in government even a sniff of corruption. Lorenzana stepped down as BCDA chairman last month. Under our strict graft laws, he continues to be liable to be sued.

Just on the basis of knowing Lorenzana and Devanadera’s track record in government — he since 2016 when he was President Duterte’s defense secretary and she since 2007 when she was appointed President Arroyo’s solicitor general — this Metro Waste case against them is not just nonsense, but ruthless. It is, in effect, bullying government officials to give them what they want, or else they suffer being jailed under the anti-graft laws. After profiting from the landfill for 25 years, the foreign company should have asked for a compromise instead of blackening veteran government officials’ names.

Metro Waste

The Metro Waste owners have accused the BCDA and CDC officials of corruption just because they are doing their jobs. In retaliation, the BCDA and CDC filed a counter-complaint asking for P45 million in damages. The Bureau of Immigration should check if the German executives in the firm have the proper visas.

Why on earth would Metro Waste charge the BCDA and CDC officials when the latter were merely complying with the law or were convinced they were complying with it?

The Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (BCDA’s statutory counsel) had issued an opinion months ago that extending the contract between CDC and Metro Waste would violate the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) Law, the framework used in bidding and awarding of the contract for the project. That the contract is covered under the BOT Law was certified by the Office of the President in November 2000 and signed by then-Executive Secretary Ronaldo Zamora. That BOT Law provides fixed terms for contracts to operate facilities, and under that law, the contract with the German firm, which ended yesterday, the BCDA and CDC cannot be compelled to automatically extend the contract for another 25 years.

Metro Waste, however, insists that the contract lease agreement was extendable by 25 years. However, no contract document says so. The firm contended in the civil suit it filed that the contract is covered by the Foreign Investors’ Lease Act (Republic Act 7652), which allows foreign companies to lease land for up to 50 years and renewable for another 25 years. But that is just their or their expensive lawyers’ interpretation, and they would have to get the courts to rule on that.

This brings me to another known phenomenon in the Philippines: Many corporate cases in courts are decided on the basis of millions or tens of millions of reasons.

Rappler

Rappler has strangely been closely covering Metro Waste and ran a piece in May that if the BCDA and CDC don’t bend over to the company’s demand to let it run the firm, there will be a garbage crisis affecting “121 municipalities from eight Central Luzon provinces.” Was rappler.com told by Metro Waste that it would blockade other companies from using the landfill if its contract weren’t renewed?

That, of course, is a classic strategy of issuing threats through captured media. Environment Secretary Ma. Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga hasn’t commented on the threat.

With US funding not coming as much as it used to (since the Americans already control the President tightly) and the internet news site not as profitable as most people had thought, has rappler.com diversified to PR, especially crisis PR?

The pristine streets of Clark, with its impressive casinos and hotels, filled with uncollected garbage bags? I don’t think that will happen.

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The post German group fights BCDA and CDC over waste collection contract first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.

German group fights BCDA and CDC over waste collection contract
Source: Breaking News PH