SBMA, Olongapo execs fight over custody of logs
SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Officials of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) and the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro) in Olongapo City are fighting over the custody of 50 logs cut from the project site of a solar and wind power plant here.
Jobin-SQM Inc., the company that will build a $200-million renewable energy facility here, obtained permits to cut the trees and transport the logs out of the free port from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Central Luzon office in Pampanga province.
But personnel from the SBMA Law Enforcement Department (LED) seized the logs on Dec. 28 when these were being transported out of the free port.
An LED incident report said the logs were confiscated because the contracted truck company failed to show a transport permit. An SBMA official, who refused to be identified for lack of authority to speak on the matter, said the logs were confiscated because there was no coordination between SBMA’s Ecology Center and LED.
The source added that Jobin-SQM Inc. obtained a transport permit from the DENR but it was not relayed to the LED personnel.
In a letter to the SBMA Ecology Center, Cenro officer Marife Castillo asked the Subic office to release the logs to the DENR instead for safekeeping.
Castillo said the cutting permit it issued to the solar firm indicated that the DENR would have custody of the logs.
But SBMA officials insisted that the logs should be under their safekeeping and these should be turned over to the Aeta community where the solar plant is located.
On Wednesday, SBMA Chair Roberto Garcia directed Orlando Maddela, LED chief, to release the dump trucks containing the logs but said the seized logs kept inside the LED compound should be transferred to the free port’s Pamulaklakin Forest Trail.
Lawyer Ruel John Kabigting, officer in charge of SBMA Ecology Center, said his office would work things out with the Cenro. He said the Aetas should benefit from the cut logs based on a memorandum of agreement that SBMA signed with the leaders of the Pastolan Aeta community.
Officials of Jobin-SQM Inc. declined to comment on the seized logs but Kabigting said the company had secured the permit to cut the trees.
Jobin-SQM Inc.’s facility inside the 800-hectare Aeta ancestral domain here will produce 150 megawatts of combined solar and wind energy. Allan Macatuno, Inquirer Central Luzon
