Total log ban’s aftermath hits hard on wood industry workers

FILE PHOTO

CARMEN, Surigao del Sur – While illegal loggers feast on forests left vulnerable by corruption and weak enforcement of the government’s moratorium on logging operations, thousands of wood industry workers throughout Caraga Region must face the adversities of joblessness.

For Carlos Cubero, a longtime forester at the Surigao Development Corporation (Sudecor), that means having had to tell his son he can’t enroll in college when classes opened last June.

Cubero, 52, and some 1,200 Sudecor workers were affected by the closure of the company’s veneer and plywood plants in the neighboring Cantilan town early this year, following the implementation of Executive Order 23 which declared a total log ban not only on natural but also residual forests.

The ban’s aftermath has hit hard on workers like Cubero, who have been in the wood industry for so long they find it difficult to shift to other jobs, or are too old to start anew. And there are thousands like him, as Caraga Region remains the country’s largest wood producer, accounting for at least 60 percent of the country’s wood supply.

“I’ve been in the company for 26 years and I can’t simply be job-hopping when I wake up tomorrow,” Cubero said. “With my job gone, so too are the loan facilities that would have helped pay for my son’s tuition.”

Alfredo Sorella, president of Sudecor’s 300-strong labor union, joined the 50-year old Sudecor in 1976, when he was 21. Suddenly finding himself jobless at 58, he had to take up fishing.

“The transition was painful. My job was my life and suddenly it was taken away— just when I was about to retire,” he said, lamenting that the work stoppage has created uncertainties on their retirement benefits.

Sudecor said the laid-off workers would be rehired once the company starts operating again, but it was uncertain about the retirees’ compensation.

Throughout Caraga Region, wood industry workers from over a hundred wood-processing companies face the same bleak prospects.

In Butuan City alone, the local government estimated that about 5,000 workers were displaced in the aftermath of the ban, as the local wood industry is heavily reliant on logs from residual forests. A major wood industry player, Richmond Plywood Corporation, said it may retrench some 1,000 workers more.

Local government units and national line agencies are scrambling to address the mass layoffs.

Last week, Butuan City Mayor Ferdinand Amante Jr. said youths from families affected by the declining wood industry will be provided scholarships under a P3.8 million grant provided by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda). Some 75 scholars will receive P10,500 each to fund their 34 days training in welding, heavy equipment operation, masonry and electricity.

Educational assistance such as this, however, does not address the immediate need to put food on the table, and other livelihood programs are widely seen as stopgap measures—and even wanting.

Of the 3,200 laid-off wood workers in Butuan that it documented in March, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) only managed to find jobs for 500 people.

In smaller towns where large concessions such as Sudecor operate, expecting for government assistance seems a wish for the impossible. In fact, towns such as Cantilan, Carmen, Madrid, Carascal and Lanuza—the seat of Sudecor’s 75,000-hectare managed forest—expect lower revenues with the company’s inactivity.

“We expect nothing from the local government. With a log ban policy that doesn’t make exemption even on well-managed, strictly guarded forests such as Sudecor’s, everybody loses,” said Sorella, the former Sudecor labor union president.

Who wins?

The runaway winners, the labor leader said, are the illegal loggers who are in cahoots with corrupt government officials, and those who exploit loopholes in EO 23 to cut and transport dipterocarps— a family of hardwood trees —from natural and residual forests.

Wood industry stakeholders and pro-environment groups in Surigao del Sur agree.

They pointed out that illegal logging still persists in the province even after authorities discovered thousands of illegally-cut Lauan flitches at a warehouse of a suspected illegal logger in Butuan City on September 25.

Aided by Sudecor personnel and environment watchdogs, police in this town seized some 8,000 board feet of bandsaw-milled lauan lumber on October 13, from a house near the barangay hall of Hinapuyan.

The confiscated lumber were believed to be owned by Rolando Seblario, owner of Butuan-based Jeroking Enterprises, whose warehouse in Barangay Baan yielded at least 20,000 board feet of Lauan lumber and thousands more of Lauan flitches hidden underneath waste lumber.

A Philippine Daily Inquirer story published two days prior to the raid named Rolando Seblario as one of the biggest players in the illegal logging business in Caraga.

Caraga Region, comprising the two Agusans, two Surigaos and Dinagat province, has been described by Anti-Illegal Logging Task Force Executive Director Renato Miranda as “the center of gravity” in illegal logging operations.