CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has filed illegal logging charges against Bagac, Bataan Mayor Rommel del Rosario after some 1,000 board feet of confiscated lumber loaded on a vehicle was found in his residence in the town.
This, even as the DENR also filed administrative charges against the police chief of Bagac for alleged unauthorized disposal of some 1,900 board feet of confiscated lumber under his custody.
The DENR said the case against the mayor was filed before the prosecutor’s office in Balanga City, following a six-month surveillance operation on the mayor.
Forest Resources Conservation Division Chief Fred Sadueste said he expected the Balanga prosecutor to remand the case against the mayor anytime.
DENR Regional Director Ricardo Calderon also said that an administrative case was filed against Bagac Police Chief Senior Inspector George Santiago after an inventory revealed that the lumber supposed to be under police safekeeping in a so-called depository area in Bagac revealed the missing lumber.
The report from the DENR in Bataan did not say whether the hot lumber found in the mayor’s residence were among those missing at the depository.
But Santiago insisted he donated the missing logs to the Bagac tourism office and the local Bagumbayan barangay council. Higher police officials, however, immediately imposed a 10-day suspension against him.
The missing lumber was reported by forest resources conservation chief Fred Sadueste who led a five-man team in the inventory of confiscated lumber in the depository area.
Sadueste said that for the past four years, the DENR in Central Luzon has already confiscated a total of 870,000 board feet of contraband forest products worth P29 million and filed over 150 illegal logging cases in local courts.
