DENR taps NBI for help vs department grafters

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

LOS BAÑOS, LAGUNA—The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) tapped the National Bureau of Investigation to run after environmental officers and employees who are reportedly making money out of the government’s reforestation program.

At the 65th annual foresters’ convention here, Environment Secretary Ramon Paje on Wednesday revealed that a P10-million DENR fund was released to the investigating agency last month to hunt down DENR employees involved in illegal mining and quarrying operations.

The DENR is poised to give another P10 million to the NBI, this time to catch its personnel in cahoots with illegal logging operators or are stealing funds from the National Greening Program (NGP), Paje said.

“I don’t want them to think, even just think, about making money out of the (NGP) program or else I will run after them,” said Paje, in a separate interview at the sidelines of the conference.

The NGP is the flagship reforestation project of President Aquino that targets to reforest over 1.5 million hectares until 2016.

So far, it has covered 578,000 ha of forest and generated 715,774 jobs since the project’s launch in May 2011, according to Paje.

He said the anti-illegal logging program has also reduced by 76 percent the number of logging hotspots all over the country, with the confiscation of 24.7 million board feet of illegally cut forest products as of June 2013.

Paje, who was guest at the Society of Filipino Foresters Inc. convention held at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, said some DENR employees are turning the NGP into a “cottage industry.”

He said the department has been getting reports about DENR employees who pocket state funds by rigging contracts to supply tree seedlings, plastic bags and other materials for the NGP.

Dr. Henry Adornado, a senior DENR administrative assistant who was with Paje during the event, said there were cases where employees dealt with private bidders instead of getting seedlings directly from the communities.

Some, he said, are involved in extortion to cover up illegal logging or mining operations.

Paje said the investigation would send a strong message that he is serious about curbing corrupt practices in the department. Since 2011, the department had fired 22 employees, among them two regional directors, while 306 personnel are currently under investigation, he said.