Friday, April 11, 2008 From raw lumber to value addition By Aquiles Z. Zonio
THE 1,500-strong cooperative members are not only guardians of the remaining forest cover in this town. They helped generate livelihood and jobs, build bridges, barangay roads and other community development projects in their locality. Their unity made them a potent force that helps propel local economy.
The Lumasal-Pananag Integrated Ecological Resources Multi-Purpose Cooperative (Lupa-IERMPC) was among the many CBMF holders nationwide whose resource use permits (RUP) were suspended in the early part of 2003 by former Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Elisea Gozun due to abuses.
After about three years lull in CBFM project, the DENR decided to lift the suspension and, strangely enough, a CBFM holder based in this province was the first if not the only beneficiary.
Lupa coop membership is composed of tribal people (60 percent), Muslims (25 percent) and Christians (15 percent). Most of them are dependent on forest for livelihood.
Rampant illegal logging
Maasim Mayor Aniceto Lopez Jr. said transport of illegally cut lumber coming from his town and other areas has been rampant.
Lopez thought, it's time to do something to solve this kind of problem within his turf.
The mayor devised a strategy to stop illegal logging activities and allow local communities, through legal means, to benefit from whatever available forest products in his area.
He tapped the help of Lupa cooperative to achieve his goal.
Lopez and Eduardo B. Paras Sr., coop chair, sought the help of Sarangani Governor Miguel Dominguez in asking then DENR Secretary Angelo T. Reyes to lift the suspension of the coop's resource use permit.
"We have to give the CBFM holder another chance. Instead of allowing illegal loggers to operate and exhaust available forest products in the area, why not let the local community members do it, themselves. We're giving them livelihood through legal means, at the same time, we're protecting and rehabilitating the forest," Dominguez said.
The governor believes that these people only need guidance, adding: "we should closely monitor their activities to ensure strict compliance of CBFM guidelines."
On November 6, 2006, Reyes issued a memorandum order allowing Lupa coop to resume operation and harvest 500 cubic meters of lumber and 100,000 lineal meters of rattan poles.
Boat making
This time, the coop wanted to try something new through the help of their local leaders.
Dominguez facilitated the meeting between the coop officials and Roger Lim, financier of tuna handline fishing and exporter of big tuna based in General Santos.
The meeting ended up in the signing of a lumber supply agreement between both parties.
Under the agreement, coop will supply the lumber requirement of Gensan Aqua Traders in constructing tuna handline boats.
The construction site was just along the shoreline of Crossing Lubo, Barangay Lumasal, Maasim to provide jobs for coop members with skills in boat making. This is the first time in the history of CBFM project that a beneficiary shifted from the traditional practice of selling raw lumber to value addition.
Aside from having a captured buyer for its lumber product, its members earned income from building boats and those qualified were eventually hired as crewmembers.
Based on its statement of income, the coop, in just a seven-month operation, posted a total gross income of about P2.4 million, most of which was derived from supplying lumber for the construction of three fishing boats.
Two of the fishing boats were already on fishing expedition. The remaining one, the biggest among the three, is set to sail within this month (March). Paras said: "In appreciation of our efforts, owners of the boats we built hired 30 coop members as fishing crew."
Livelihood projects
Paras bared the coop will soon venture into other livelihood project like furniture making.
According to him, the coop is just waiting for personnel from Tesda to conduct skills training among its members on furniture making.
The coop has already put up a furniture shop where thousands of rattan poles with assorted sizes harvested from CBFM area were piled up.
Other coop's livelihood projects include the putting up of eight small sari-sari stores, a videoke house and nursery for forest and fruit trees, including coffee.
Its tribal members have also embarked on massive abaca and coffee planting in residual forest within the CBFM area.
The mayor claimed the resumption of coop's operation has reduced significantly the number of people coming to his office for help.
"The 1,500 coop members with about 5,000 dependents no longer come to my office to ask for help or solicit. The coop takes care of their needs," Lopez said.
The mayor noted lots of economic activities in the area due to better road condition and CBFM. Before, the primary means of transportation leading to inner or hinterland communities in Lumasal and Pananag was either horses or carabao-drawn cart.
Now, a horde of single motorcycles-for-hire owned no less than by local residents have started to ply the difficult routes.
Ernesto Diamoda, a coop member and tribal chieftain from remote Datal Sinalap village, said in vernacular that "CBFM project has prrovided us with livelihood an helped us send our children to school."
Beaming with pride, Diamoda said he has now a college student taking up office management course in one of the private schools in General Santos City.
Development projects
In partnership with various government and non-government organizations (NGO), the coop helped a lot in establishing community development projects like barangay community center, waiting shed, community multi-purpose project, concrete bridge and a 5.5-kilometer barangay road.
Moripaga Umpar, DENR-Central Mindanao regional technical director for forestry, said his office is ready to work hand-in-hand with the coop in preserving, protecting and rehabilitating the remaining forest cover in this part of the country.
"I admire the persistence of coop officials in following up their project. During the meeting, the coop chair sometimes went even to the extent of shouting at me but that's part of our work. We have to do our work and provide proper guidance to ensure this CBFM project is in the right track," Umpar said.
