P7-M worth of illegal logs intercepted in Agusan

BUTUAN CITY - Illegal logs estimated to be worth P7 million were intercepted by an interagency body in various areas of Trento town in Agusan del Sur on Monday. If put together end to end, the logs — retrieved from barangays Tudela, Pangyan, and San Ignacio — will reach a length of two kilometers, Col. Arturo Tolentino, the Philippine Army’s 401st Infantry Brigade Commander told GMANews.TV, said. The retrieval of illegal logs will continue until Wednesday, Tolentino said. Most of the confiscated illegally-cut logs are gubas, umbrella, pine, loktob, and other miscellaneous trees. All confiscated logs will be turned over to Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and then to the National Resources Development Corporation (NRDC) for bidding, said Tolentino, who heads Task Force "Oplan Kalasangan." The body was created to intensify anti-illegal logging campaign in the entire Caraga Region, a special administrative zone composed of Agusan del Norte, Agusan del Sur, Dinagat Islands, Surigao del Norte, and Surigao del Sur. The task force is also composed of the DENR, the Philippine National Police, and other government groups. Tolentino said an independent investigation must be conducted to determine real owner or owners of the illegally cut logs and why the haul materialized without detection of DENR’s Community Environment and Natural Resources (CENRO) and Provincial Environment and Natural Resources offices (PENRO). “Let us give chance to local DENR and law enforcement offices and personnel assigned in said areas to explain why this happened undetected considering it will take days or even weeks before these huge volumes of illegal logs converged," the army colonel said. Meanwhile, as the task force was busy attending to its log retrieval and inventory efforts, some 200 dismayed members of the indigenous people in the region picketed the DENR Caraga regional office in Butuan City. The group, which is on its second day of protest, called for an independent, no non-sense investigation against alleged unabated corruption resulting from the bidding process conducted by the NRDC. In its letter it submitted to incoming President Benigno Aquino III, it also alleged that some provincial and community environmental and natural resources offices were tolerating these illegal logging activities. The group alleged that the government loses billions of pesos of revenues that allegedly went to some few pockets due alleged anomalies in NRDC bidding ever since year 2000 to 2010. The lumad protesters also enclosed evidence of their allegations in their letter to the incoming president. The lumad’s legal counsel Atty. Edward Buenaflor, a classmate of incoming Executive Secretary Paquito "Jojo" Ochoa, and former DAR Secretary Florencio Abad have called for investigation of all officials and personnel involved in the arrangement. Buenaflor is former Executive Assistant to then League of Cities former President Jerry Treñas, former City Mayor of Iloilo now newly-elected congressman. - RJAB Jr., GMANews.TV