And while they try to recover all the undetonated ordnance lying around, destruction of these UXOs poses a high-impact threat to the surrounding environment. And with the forest floor bone-dry at this time of year, we asked the Minister: why carry out these detonations in the peak of the dry season?
REPORTER-
"In terms of the large scale destruction does the BDF take any responsibility for that ecological biodiversity area, it is important for those reasons."
Florencio Marin Jr., Minister of National Defence & Border Security
"It is critically important and so the military is working along with the Department of Environment that we will be able to assess all the damages and from there we will see what will transpire. But I don't want to offer comments when there is still an ongoing investigation on what transpired there in the area."
REPORTER-
"And should they have waited seeing we are in the middle of the dry season right now."
Florencio Marin Jr.
"You have explosive detonations, we have lost a life sadly. I will not question the BDF as to timing of this. I wish we can continue this. Firstly I hope we have no more in the country but I do believe they had to move expeditiously because this serves no purpose but to endanger lives and sadly we have lost a life."
REPORTER-
"My understanding is that they were safeguarded and had been retrieved already?"
Florencio Marin Jr.
"Yes I mean it is always retrieved and has to be handled safely these are our bomb experts and they know how to handle it. So I mean these incidents do occur and we are working closely withe environment to ensure we can coordinate properly in our time. But I support the military in that we need to destroy these ammunitions expeditiously."
