Corrupt DENR officials the problem

This is in reaction to the call of Leonardo Angeles for the lifting of Executive Order 23 (Inquirer, 7/6/12). It is not the EO which is the problem, it is the corruption in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. We have reported many violations of the law. Instead of punishing the erring officials, the DENR defended them and their lies.

Last year two trucks of fresh-cut lumber from Ifma (Integrated Forest Management Agreement)-holder Integrated Development Corp. were intercepted by the police of Casiguran, Aurora. LGU officials, priests and the people of Casiguran accompanied the police in the operation. The lumber was declared old-cut by the local DENR office, which was defended by Penro (Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer) Benjamin Mina. Environment Secretary Ramon Paje has been deaf to our clamor for Mina’s removal as Quezon Penro. The case is now with the Ombudsman.

Last February 2012, Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance (SSMNA) intercepted lumber in Dingalan, Aurora. The lumber came from another Ifma-holder, San Roque Sawmill. DENR personnel showed us a permit signed by Regional Executive Director Ricardo Calderon and Mina, allowing more than 700,000 board feet of lumber to be transported. It cited the resolution issued by Secretary Paje last November 2011, that lumber paid before the log ban could be transported. We have asked Secretary Paje three times to give us the documents used by the DENR to prove that there were 700,000 board feet of lumber in the possession of San Roque Sawmill. We have not received any response until now.

The DENR simply could not prove the existence of 700,000 board feet of lumber. Last March 2011, the DENR, together with a representative of Social Action of Dingalan, attested that there were only about 1,000 board feet of lumber in San Roque at the time. Moreover, upon the request of farmers whose irrigation system was drying up, SSMNA visited San Roque last Aug. 6, 2011. We didn’t see 700,000 board feet of lumber there. What we saw were stumps of fresh-cut trees right in the middle of the river and fresh-cut lumber hidden on the sides of pathways.

Ifma provisions and the log ban were clearly violated. (The Ifma-holder and the DENR did not expect that SSMNA would climb mountains.) The DENR was present when we presented what we saw right inside San Roque Sawmill, yet no action was taken.

We have insisted that the ban on logging, which still holds, can never be implemented by a corrupt agency. The same thing will happen to the new EO on mining. The floods killing thousands of people, the bald mountains, the abandoned mining sites, the dry fields—all these and many more are mute testimonies to how the DENR, for 25 years, has (not) protected the environment which gives us life.

To President Aquino, please appoint to the DENR people who can clean it up.

—FR. PETE MONTALLANA, OFM,

chair, Save Sierra

Madre Network Alliance,

savesierramadrealliance@

gmail.com