The Supreme Court will convene its committee tasked to monitor the implementation of its 2008 order to rehabilitate and revive Manila Bay, an official said Sunday.
“‹“The committee on the Manila Bay cleanup should convene soon in accordance with the earlier resolution to strengthen the resolve to clean Manila Bay,” high court spokesman and Court Administrator Midas Marquez said.
Marquez made the disclosure after the Duterte administration laid down the plan to clean up the waterway to comply with the high court’s decision.
Marquez, who has been tapped as vice chairman of the committee, said the Court was expected to name a new head of the committee after its former chairman, Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco Jr., retired from the judiciary in August last year. Velasco wrote the unanimous decision in the landmark writ of kalikasan case on Manila Bay.
Marquez also welcomed the Duterte administration’s reported plan to pursue the Manila Bay cleanup and abide by the high court’s continuing mandamus, which required 13 government agencies led by the Environment department to implement a rehabilitation plan.
“The seven-year rehabilitation plan is good news to the Court because it appears complementary to the continuing mandamus it issued in 2008,” Marquez said.
“The Manila Bay cleanup must really be a concerted effort by all concerned agencies in the three branches of government.”
Duterte had recently ordered the cleanup of Manila Bay and approved the Environment department’s seven-year plan.
He warned the hotels along Roxas Boulevard they would be closed if the regulators found they were dumping waste into Manila Bay.
The latest effort to revive Manila Bay will cost the government about P47 billion, which the administration will reportedly get from the road user’s tax upon the abolition of the Road Board.
The Environment department led the inter-agency task force assigned to oversee the cleanup in coming up with a plan that will be launched on Jan. 27 at the Manila Yacht Club.
The plan to revive Manila Bay came after the successful six-month rehabilitation of the world-famous Boracay Island last year.
In its decision in Dec. 2008, the High Court issued a continuing mandamus and ordered several government agencies to implement the rehabilitation of Manila Bay in the case filed by concerned citizens led by environmental lawyer and Ramon Magsaysay awardee Antonio Oposa Jr.
Apart from Environment department, the order was also directed at the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, Department of Education, Department of Health, Department of Agriculture, Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Budget and Management, the Philippine Coast Guard, the Philippine National Police Maritime Group and the Department of the Interior and Local Government.
The 36-page decision described the Manila Bay as “a place with a proud historic past, once brimming with marine life and a spot for different recreation activities, but is now a dirty and slowly dying expanse because of the indifference of people and institutions.”
