Locsin orders all PH diplomats to return to their posts in Canada
Credit to Author: BERNADETTE E. TAMAYO| Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 03:30:58 +0000
FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin on Friday ordered the Philippine diplomats to Canada – who were previously recalled over the trash row – to return to their respective posts.
He issued the directive after all 69 container vans with imported trash were loaded to the M/V Bavaria for reshipment to Canada.
The retrieval process started at about 9 p.m. Thursday and was completed at 3 a.m. Friday.
Locsin, on orders of President Rodrigo Duterte, on May 16 recalled the Philippine ambassador and consuls to Canada after Ottawa failed to comply with his May 15 deadline to take back the tons of garbage it exported to Manila in 2013.
“To our recalled posts, get your flights back. Thanks and sorry for the trouble you went through to drive home a point,” Locsin said on Twitter.
Philippine Ambassador to Canada Petronila Garcia returned to the Philippines on May 17 at about 3:50 a.m. on board Philippine Airlines Flight 119.
The Philippines has consulates in Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto, and Vancouver headed by Consuls General Gilberto Asuque, Maria Andrelita Austria and Rosalita Prospero respectively.
Prospero, however, died on May 28 in Toronto. She had served as Consul General to Toronto since May 24, 2015. Her previous diplomatic postings were in Sydney, Australia and Paris, France.
There are 901,218 Filipinos in Canada as of April 2018, comprising a mix of naturalized Canadians, permanent residents and temporary foreign workers. This number comprises almost 2.6 percent of Canada’s population.
In 2017, remittances from Filipinos in Canada totalled over $644.4 million, up by 12.6 percent from 2016 ($572.8 million).
A total of 103 container vans from Canada loaded with garbage had been mislabeled as “recyclable plastic materials.” These were shipped to Manila between 2013 and 2014 by Chronic Incorporated, a private company in Ontario, and were consigned to Chronic Plastics, a Philippine company.
Upon inspection, the Bureau of Customs (BoC) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) discovered that the shipment contained bottles, adult diapers, kitchen refuse and other household trash.
In 2016, Canada amended its regulations around hazardous waste shipments to prevent such incidents from happening again.
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