How to kill a mountain

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March Fianza

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet -- As we go to press, I received an email from Amor Moresto of the Benguet District Office of Congressman Ronald M. Cosalan about certain soft projects that the hardworking gentleman from Tublay initially worked out for his province mates. Foremost in the list are social welfare programs distributed for medical, health and educational assistance through the DSWD, worth PhP14M; assistance fund for Tulong Pangkabuhayan Para sa Disadvantaged Workers (TUPAD), and the Government Internship Program (GIP), both under the DOLE, with a total of PhP3.4M; and PhP3.1M fund for the Special Training for Employment Program (Community-Based Skills Training) under the TESDA.

This was followed by another funding worth Php14M intended for the educational assistance of qualified students in Benguet under the Tulong Dunong Program of the CHED. Application under this program started in March 2014, screening of which was held following CHED guidelines. A minimum of 10 scholars in each of the 140 barangays in Benguet were chosen.

Under the government’s health assistance program, Rep. Cosalan worked out at least Php10.5M through the DOH that was distributed as ff: PhP3M for Philippine Heart Center (PHC) patients, PhP500,000.00 for National Kidney & Transplant Institute (NKTI) patients; PhP4M for dialysis treatment, laboratory procedures and payment of hospital bills at the Benguet General Hospital (BeGH); and PhP3M for dialysis treatment, laboratory procedures and payment of hospital bills at the Baguio General Hospital (BGH).

To avail of the medical assistance, the patient’s Certificate of Residency, a Medical Certificate, Clinical Abstract and Hospital Bill are required. The assistance is not in the form of cash but through a Guarantee Letter issued by the DOH.

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The malicious felling and illegal cutting of more than a thousand trees and the earthmoving activities sans an environmental impact statement application at Mount Santo Tomas is one issue that refuses to die, not that it involves prominent persons but because the unlawful acts were of an unthinkable magnitude that has been unprecedented, unless done by nature.

News headlines repeatedly reported those involved as Baguio Congressman Nick Aliping Jr., Goldrich Construction, RUA Construction and Development Corp., and BLC Construction and Aggregates. Although I hinted that were others involved who may even be guiltier because of their failure to do what should have been done to stop the crimes committed. I remember Sen. Miriam D. Santiago, a former RTC Judge, once said: “One is guiltier when he did not stop an imminent collision at a time when he had the means to do so.”

Why bad things happen in our midst in the first place may also be blamed on private persons and public officials who are insensitive to the environment in their areas even while they apparently had prior knowledge and lingering suspicion of an impending environmental destruction. Naivety or gullibility or anyway you call it is no excuse when the result of it affects not just a few but a community. Imagine bulldozers, pay loaders and trucks moving about but nobody hears, nobody sees and no one talks about it?

Previous news reports are enough proof to show that certain LGUs had previous information in 2012 about a politician’s proposal to build an eco-park in an area that has been proclaimed a national park since 1940. In that meeting in 2012, a wild and natural assumption has been born in the minds of public officials that in the absence of the necessary permits, Mount Santo Tomas may be ravaged intentionally. These thoughts should have urged them to be on the lookout. I now believe that they too are equally guilty or guiltier than those principally liable.

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In a previous column, I said the issue has reached a point beyond the personalities directly involved. I said it is no longer those directly involved that we are talking about but the act of defacing Mount Santo Tomas. At this point, the actors have become incidental. The reason for this is that we have to move on as no amount of finger-pointing will bring back the natural cover of the mountain.

And so, I thought that it was right that I doff my hat to the Cordillera Conservation Trust (CCT), a private group that promotes environment protection, for spearheading last week a tree-planting and mountain-climbing activity at Mount Santo Tomas along with participants from Baguio, and the municipalities of Tuba and La Trinidad. CCT’s move called "#Reforest the road" aimed to restore the beauty of that part of the national park where the thousand trees were illegally felled by heavy equipment that illicitly opened a road for a proposed eco-park.

Prior to the tree-planting activity, JP Alipio of the CCT led a forum at the University of the Philippines, Baguio that discussed about children and the environment. In that assembly, it talked about children having “new” concepts of “play” that has been replaced with “killing an enemy on a computer monitor from actually chasing a playmate hiding behind a tree.”

Alipio said it is important for children to be exposed in a natural environment so they may grow to value it, and further suggested that parents should “bring their kids to parks, instead of bringing them to the malls or keeping them at home in front of their computers.”

As the CCT was moving to do its part, it was learned that officials of the Baguio Water District refuted reports that no cleaning operations was initiated by any of the violators at the Bawadi’s Amliang water springs, saying  their personnel had been conducting on-site ocular inspections daily but no clean-up was done. This, in addition to what CCT tree-planting participants reported that what they found planted on the excavated portions of the park were camote plants, not trees. Aysus! There seems to be no serious move on the part of those involved to restore the damage done.