No change on log policy–Hataman

COTABATO CITY—Insisting he did not backtrack, the highest officer in charge of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) yesterday said the autonomous region has a separate set of guidelines to enforce an order by President Aquino to ban logging that did not cover private tree plantations.

Mujiv Hataman, acting ARMM governor, said his order to ban all logging in natural growth forests and watersheds stays and was not different from the first order he issued to stop logging in the region on Mr. Aquino’s instruction.

According to Hataman, the central office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) issued guidelines to enforce the President’s antilogging Executive Order No. 23 that did not cover

ARMM.

The ARMM government, said Hataman, had to issue its own guidelines on EO 23 on advice by Ernesto Adobo, environment undersecretary. Adobo wrote to Usman Sarangani, ARMM environment secretary when the EO was issued last year, to say

ARMM needed its own guidelines on EO 23 because the national DENR’s guidelines did not apply to the autonomous region.

The ARMM guidelines turned out to exempt so-called tree plantations from the ban on commercial logging under EO 23.

Hataman consulted people in Lanao del Sur, source of killer logs that pummeled people to their deaths in Iligan City during the Dec. 17 disaster, and was told cutting trees in private lands was allowed by the DENR. Ryan Rosauro, Inquirer Mindanao