THE Customs official tagged in the anomalous entry in Cebu City of a waste shipment from South Korea admitted to her lapses Tuesday, November 21.
Jessica Delgado, chief of the Bureau of Customs (BoC) Entry Processing Unit at the Port of Cebu, told the House committee on ecology Tuesday that she failed to check whether the shipment matched the Harmonized System (HS) Codes.
She also failed to ask whether the shipment, which was dumped in a warehouse in Cebu, was covered by an import permit.
HS is an internationally standardized system of names and numbers to classify traded products. It identifies the items being imported.
In this case, the HS did not match the description of the items which are wood chips and recycled synthetic resins.
Both waste materials, which the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) claimed are highly hazardous, need an import permit.
"Yes," said Delgado when asked by committee chair Estrelita Suansing if she would agree that there was a failure on her part in checking the HS codes and the description of the items.
"I don't usually check the HS codes ma'am," Delgado said at the continuation of the hearing into the waste shipment Tuesday.
But she admitted that it is her "responsibility and obligation to check if the description matches the HS codes."
Suansing also asked Delgado why she failed to require the brokers to produce an import permit.
"It's a lapse. I admit. It's my lapse," answered Delgado.
Suansing told Delgado that she now has two lapses: first, for failing to check whether the description matched the HS codes; and second, for not asking for an import permit.
Cebu 3rd District Rep. Gwendolyn Garcia, author of the resolution seeking a investigation into the shipment, described Delgado's failure as "serious" since she failed to do her "primordial duty."
During the interpellation, Garcia asked Cebu Customs deputy collector Rico Rey Francis Holganza whether Delgado committed a very serious lapse.
"Considering that the shipment involves trash, I would say that it's definitely not a minor lapse," said Holganza.
The waste shipment from South Korea was illegally dumped in Cebu last January 20. It was the second recorded waste shipment from another country.
Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Justine Trudeau said it would be possible to ship back to his country tons of trash that were dumped in the Philippines in 2013 now that the legal barriers have been addressed. (VoxPop Philippines)
