Anomalies in the DENR

LETTER

TERESA MONTILLA, in her letter to the Inquirer (“How many more before we say ‘enough’?” Opinion, 8/20/15), complained about the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for allowing the cutting and earth-balling of 44 trees in the former Army-Navy Club grounds, and of “thousands of age-old heritage trees” in other areas through the years.

Montilla’s letter angered me, pushing me to look further into another anomaly in the DENR, involving not the cutting but the planting of trees under the National Greening Program (NGP). My mother is from Bulacan and my father is from Rizal, where there are many NGP areas. I had heard unpleasant things from friends in religious organizations monitoring this and related government programs—even before I read Montilla’s letter—about DENR personnel working in the NGP, particularly in Doña Remedios Trinidad, Antipolo and Tanay.

I felt some relief to learn that Environment Secretary Ramon Paje had ordered an investigation into these anomalies. Thus, I expected that the erring personnel would soon be reprimanded, charged or fired. Before the end of 2015, however, I found out that the recommendations of the investigating teams for the erring personnel to be charged had long been pending on the desk of the DENR ombudsman, an assistant secretary who is supposed to endorse the recommendations to Secretary Paje.

One major anomalous issue raised by legitimate people’s organizations that are establishing plantations is the sale of seedlings by growers favored by DENR-NGP personnel. This connivance has reportedly resulted in big financial bonanzas for them, maybe in the millions of pesos. The NGP supposedly encourages people’s organizations and other groups to raise nurseries themselves for their benefit, not for the DENR-NGP insiders.

Another anomaly is the hurried setting up also by DENR-NGP personnel of “people’s organizations” to be given plantation projects, for the former to share in the proceeds from the sale of seedlings.

The DENR-NGP personnel involved in these anomalies, who have been recommended to be charged, seem to be incorrigible, as they persist in their crooked ways, despite this administration’s pitch for “daangmatuwid” because they are reportedly being coddled by their immediate bosses, the provincial officials of DENR Bulacan and Rizal.

Secretary Paje, I am looking forward to the recommendations finally reaching your desk, as well as to your ordering the erring officials to go—the first among them, the DENR ombudsman who has been taking his sweet (or sweetened?) time reporting to you.

Mr. Secretary, reprimand, charge or fire the crooks in your department. There should be no letup in your guard. Take it from Ombudsman ConchitaCarpio Morales whose list of culprits has increased, even as the Aquino administration is about to end. You can still save what may yet be the best program of this administration, in response to the biggest threat the world is facing now, which was taken up in the Paris conference—global warming and climate change.

—Remedios A. Paez paezrem@gmail.com