Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Angelo Reyes said experts had warned him that huge amounts of methane trapped in the site could explode if triggered, destroying lives and property.

He said some 30,000 families or roughly 150,000 people lived in tenement housing built on the site.

"What is most important is the welfare of the people," he said in a statement.

"We have to tell the people of these new developments. We could not sit here and allow them to have cancer or just die suddenly in a methane explosion," he said.

Reyes said the government had erred when it built the 21 medium-rise tenement housing blocks after shutting the dump, known as Smokey Mountain, near Manila's dockyards in 1990.

The error should be corrected immediately and not allowed to endanger people, Reyes said.

Smokey Mountain got its name from the heavy clouds of methane that rose above it when it was used as a garbage dump.

It became a tourist draw and a symbol of the sprawling poverty in the Philippines.

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