CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Over three years now after Pres. Aquino ordered a moratorium on logging in the country, the Department and Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Central Luzon has ordered the “immediate inventory” of lumber stocks, logs and fl itches of over 400 furniture shops and sash factories in the region.
“This is in a bid to monitor the wood industry’s compliance with Pres. Benigno Aquino III’s Executive Order 23 which calls for a moratorium on the cutting and harvesting of timber in natural and residual forests,” said a press release issued by the regional DENR office.
DENR Regional Executive Director Maximo Dichoso deployed four “composite teams of senior foresters, each led by a DENR deputy director, in Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac and Nueva Ecija, to determine the sources of wood materials and the available wood supply of furniture makers and sash manufacturers in these provinces.”
The EO was issued way back in February 2011. It ordered a logging moratorium on Philippine national and residual forests to protect and stop the destruction of watersheds and river systems.
Aquino also then created a task force to lead the government’s campaign against illegal logging. Dichoso authorized the newly created composite teams “to confi scate all illegal lumber found on the stockyard of erring wood manufacturers and to fi le charges against them under the Revised Forestry Code of the Philippines or PD 705 and other applicable laws.”
“The move is to ensure that the wood industry only gets its supply of raw materials from legitimate sources, and that appropriate forestry taxes are paid to the government,” he said.
He stressed that violators of PD 705 shall be charged with theft under Articles 309 and 310 of the Revised Penal Code, and face imprisonment of up to 20 years for forest products worth more than P22,000.
