Arroyo urged: Revoke Quezon forest deal

SIERRA MADRE LOGGING
By Delfin Mallari Jr.InquirerLast updated 00:41am (Mla time) 09/04/2006

http://newsinfo.inq7.net/inquirerheadlines/regions/view_article.php?article_id=18787

Published on Page A22 of the September 4, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

LUCENA CITY—Provincial officials and a multisectoral forest protection council urged President Macapagal-Arroyo to revoke a controversial government forest management contract covering 34,660 hectares of land in the Sierra Madre mountain ranges.

Board Member Eladio Pasamba last week questioned Malacañang’s basis for reinstating the license granted to Timberland Forest Products Inc. (TFPI), owned by Bulacan-based logger Wilson Ng, for its Integrated Forest Management Agreement (Ifma).

Pasamba noted that after the revocation of the Ifma by then Environment Secretary Elisea Gozun on Jan. 13, 2004 due to alleged anomaly in the approval process, nothing had substantially changed in the TFPI as shown by the company’s record in the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He presented a certified copy from the SEC stating that TFPI failed to file the required company general information sheet for 2003 up to 2006.

The firm also failed to submit financial statements for 2002 up to 2005, based on the same SEC certification.

Pasamba noted that TFPI had a paid-up capital of only P250,000.

Johnny Glorioso, chair of the Provincial Multisectoral Forest Protection Council’s committee on information, appealed to the provincial board to ask Malacañang to reconsider its decision and revoke the contract granted to TFPI.

“Cutting trees in the Sierra Madre, whether legal or illegal, is tantamount to the desecration of the memories of thousands of people who died in the last tragedy. It seems that our government never really learned (its lessons from that experience),” Glorioso said.

Logging has been identified as among the key causes of natural disasters that struck the Sierra Madre area in 2004.

In an earlier interview, Ng appealed to his critics to cast away their prejudices and give his company a chance to be part of the government’s reforestation program.

“We also care for the Sierra Madre. Give my company a chance to prove its sincerity. We are not loggers who irresponsibly cut trees, we’re also tree planters,” Ng said in a phone interview.
He said he was already maintaining an eight-hectare nursery with 296,000 tree seedlings of different varieties in the mountain village of Canaway in General Nakar town long before the killer flash floods and landslides struck northern Quezon in late 2004.

“I have a certification from the DENR as proof. Anyone can inspect the place for his satisfaction,” he stressed.

He said that after the calamity, the only area that had remained undisturbed by soil erosion was the perimeter of the nursery site.

According to Ng, that incident has pushed him to appeal his case to Malacañang.
“Our forest management contract with the government is primarily focused on planting and not merely on cutting of trees. The trees that we will be allowed to cut are only those mature, overmature and defective trees as spelled out in the document,” Ng explained.