Bataan, Philippines — Nuclear/Coal-Free Bataan Movement (NFBM) and the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ) vehemently condemn the death of a worker in Aboitiz’s GNPower coal-fired power plant in Mariveles, Bataan, during its operations on June 13, 2026. The worker, Marko Puno, reportedly had his safety harness entangled with the crane hoist cable. 

Derek Cabe of NFBM said that incidents like this can only happen due to a lack of sufficient workplace safety measures, creating extremely unsafe working conditions for workers and endangering their lives. She explained, “Dust containing silica and coal is already a great threat to workers inside a coal plant. Add to this, the giant machinery operating around it can be dangerous if there aren’t enough worker safety policies, equipment, and safety training given to workers who have to work around these machines.”

Cabe stressed that the Dinginin coal plant had historically been riddled with mishaps. In 2017, three of five injured workers in the said plant were critically hurt and sustained various degrees of burns due to boiler backfire. In 2018, a Chinese worker at the plant also died after a steel beam fell on his back.

“Marko was stuck in that condition for two hours before he was extricated, according to police reports, and the incident was only communicated to them nearly six hours after it took place, which we urge to be investigated,” Cabe lamented.

Several localnews outlets reported GNPower’s statement regarding the incident. The statement clarified that Puno was employed by their contractor partner, GEGA Engineering and Construction, which was performing maintenance work at the time of the incident.

Ian Rivera, national coordinator of the PMCJ, highlighted that large fossil fuel and power corporations often rely on contractual workers to shield themselves from direct legal, financial, moral, and employer liability. These contractualized and subcontracted workforces are often stripped of the protections that direct employment would provide. This precarity must end alongside the systems that allow labor costs to be kept low, including direct accountability of companies to workers, to shore up the profit margins of these companies.

“Last year, three workers died in Pagbilao, Quezon when a fire broke out in Unit 3 of the Pagbilao Power Station. PMCJ also interviewed a former worker of the coal plant in Mauban, Quezon, where he detailed incidents of deaths inside the coal plant, which the coal plant covered up,” Rivera added.

Rivera flagged that just last April 2026, the Department of Energy and Energy Regulatory Commission conducted a site inspection of the Dinginin coal plant following the outage of its 668 MW Unit 2 due to a boiler leak.

“The incident that took Marko’s life, and the many others before him, is an unfortunate result of a system ingrained in the power sector and the economic machine of our country. Money will come before lives. Profit is first before the workers. We hold Aboitiz and the entire fossil fuel industry responsible for their deaths,” Rivera said.

Cabe highlighted that coal is already an unsafe source of energy as it is. “Coal is volatile and highly combustible. In 2023, a spontaneous combustion in its crusher house caused a fire in GNPower Mariveles, shutting down Units 1 and 2. Aboitiz, in its endless greed and ruthless pursuit of profit, keeps insisting that coal is a viable source of energy, and not the fatal and highly dangerous substance we have all come to know here in Bataan. It is clear that coal not only affects the nearby communities but also its workers.”  

Coal plants, despite being known to poison the air with heavy metals, still persist in the country because of their perceived cost compared to scaling up renewable energy (RE). But the hidden costs of coal, are far too great to even compare to RE. From its extraction to burning, coal releases carbon emissions to the atmosphere and causes immeasurable negative health impacts on the communities it leeches onto. 

NFBM and PMCJ asserted that accountability must take the form of safer working conditions and an independent investigation of what really transpired that caused Puno’s death. We also demand a workers-led just transition toward safe, sustainable, and democratized RE systems.

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