House hearings sought on collapses, fire at landfills

Members of the search and rescue team look for people after a landslide at the landfill in Barangay Binaliw, Cebu City on January 11, 2026. Hard hat-wearing rescue workers and backhoes dug through rubble in search of survivors in the shadow of a mountain of garbage that buried dozens of landfill employees in the central Philippines. Cheryl Baldicantos, AFP 

MANILA — Lawmakers from the Makabayan bloc are seeking a House probe into recent collapses and a fire at landfills in the country as well as into the welfare of communities near the trash dump sites.

ACT Teachers Party-List Rep. Antonio Tinio, Gabriela Party-List Rep. Sarah Elago, and Kabataan Party-List Rep. Renee Co are asking the committees on the environment, health, and labor and employment to investigate what they called a series of incidents at the landfills.

Among those they listed are the January 8 collapse of a massive garbage mound in Cebu City, the February 20 waste collapse at the Rizal Provincial Sanitary Landfill, the fire that broke at the non-operational Navotas Sanitary Landfill last April 10, and the May 20 trash slide at the New Carmen Sanitary Landfill in Davao City.

The Makabayan solons said the House probe should look into the landfill incidents’ impact on the environment, health and safety of the nearby communities, and the livelihood and working conditions of waste workers.

“We owe it to the victims and their families—and to every community living in the shadow of a landfill—to get to the bottom of these tragedies. Accountability must not wait for the next collapse,” Tinio said.

Elago said the hearings should also look at how the landfill incidents affected the health and safety of nearby communities and of waste workers.