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Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Logging firm gets special treatment
By Antonio M. Ajero and Ben O. Tesiorna
A LOGGING group that recently revived its Timber License Agreement (TLA) does not have to prepare a new operational plan before it could start logging the remaining forests of Davao Oriental.
The technical men of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) 11 are allegedly working on the new operational plan for Matuguina Integrated Wood Products, Inc. (MIWPI), according to DENR insiders.
This favored treatment of the logging company is revealed by DENR insiders.
The DENR sources said the agency's technical men have checked into a small hotel along the Davao-Agusan road to work overtime on the operational plan that has to be rushed in order for MIWPI to resume its operation.
A memorandum order issued by DENR Secretary Michael Defensor last June 5 directed DENR 11 Regional Executive Director Edilberto Buiser to lift the 19-year-old suspension of MIWPI's TLA 354.
But the order stated that MIWPI should prepare a new operational plan before it could start cutting trees in the area.
The TLA 354 of MIWPI was suspended last July 15, 1986 by then Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), which is headed by former senator Ernesto Maceda.
Meanwhile, sources in Davao Oriental disclosed that TLA 354 encompasses some 65,000 hectares of forested areas in the towns of Baganga, Manay, and Caraga.
MIWPI's TLA covers several ancestral domain areas, which some tribal groups or indigenous people (IPs) are asking government to turn into community-based forestry management areas (CBFM).
Senator Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel Jr. has questioned the action of Defensor in lifting the TLA suspension, which the IPs claimed was done without proper consultation with the lumads and officials of the barangays and towns affected.
MIWPI's TLA was first suspended on July 15, 1986, by the then Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), headed by former senator Ernesto Maceda, the first of nine Environment and Natural Resources secretaries since the lifting of Martial Law.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (October 11, 2005 issue)
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