Lawmakers want probe on massive logging in Lanao

Friday, February 10, 2012

TWO lawmakers are proposing to investigate local officials, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the police and military in Lanao del Sur on massive logging.

This after noting that logging operations in the province aggravated last year’s flash floods in some parts of Northern Mindanao that killed more than a thousand people and left hundreds more missing.

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Cagayan de Oro Representative Rufus B. Rodriguez (2nd district) and Abante Mindanao (AbaMin) party-list Representative Maximo Rodriguez Jr. passed House Resolution 2042 directing the House Committee on Good Government to investigate why there are continuous illegal logging activities in Lanao del Sur, which aggravated the flash floods in December.

The two lawmakers said the proposed investigation is needed to determine why logging operations still continue in the area despite a total log ban ordered by President Benigno Aquino III through an executive order.

The Rodriguez brothers said according to the findings of Task Force Sendong, Vicmar Development Corp. has been “stock-piling” timber in its log pond at the Kapai-Bayug river junction before processing the wood at its sawmill in Barangay Hinaplanon in Iligan City.

The task force was created by Governor Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to investigate the reckless cutting of trees in the province.

Vicmar Development Corp. is a Makati-based logging and plywood company that operates a logging company in Lanao del Sur since 1975.

The task force, according to Representative Rufus, gathered report on the existence of “carabao logging” or small-scale loggers in the municipalities of Kapai and Tagoloan II in Lanao del Sur.

Based on the accounts of “Sendong” survivors in Iligan City, huge logs thundering down from the mountainsides crushed houses and killed residents during the flash flood in December brought by Tropical Storm Sendong.

Reports said the logs may have come from the forestlands of Kapai and Tagoloan II stored at the log pond of Vicmar.

There were also reports that some people suspected to be illegal loggers tried to bribe officials for them to get the logs washed away by the floods.

But according to Representative Rufus, DENR officials in Lanao del Sur claimed they had not received information that Vicmar and other logging companies continued to cut trees after the log ban issued by Aquino.

“There is also a need to determine why these local officials were not aware of the logging operations in the area or they are just turning a blind eye with the anomalies happening to the benefit of these loggers who violate the laws,” he said.

During an environmental forum held recently in Cagayan de Oro, DENR Northern Mindanao Director Corazon Galinato had ordered her men to investigate the alleged illegal logging in the region and asked them to submit a report immediately.