NEGROS ORIENTAL, Philippines - The Region 7 office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is set to donate confiscated forest products worth P114,191 to the Department Education (DepEd), which the latter said will be used to repair school, classrooms and other related uses. "These forest products were confiscated due to lack of necessary documents and requirements during transport and were deposited in Barangay Tiguib of this town" said DENR 7 Regional Director, Maximo Dichoso. He informed that the forest products consist of mahogany, gmelina, bagalunga, makaasim, sangilo and acacia lumber pieces totaling 8,898.68 board feet
To date, DENR7 has already turned-over a total of 12,216.91 board feet of lumber pieces amounting to some P230,714 to DepEd. The turn-over of the confiscated forest products is part of DENR Secretary Ramon Paje's call to exhaust all possibilities to expedite the adjudication of cases of all illegally-sourced and transported forest products in line with the present direction to donate them to DepEd. "Secretary Paje has ordered that as part of his priority or flagship programs, all logs confiscated by the DENR without court cases will now be donated to the Department of Education (DepEd) and not to the Natural Resource Development Corporation," Dichoso explained. He added that the DENR has continuously been conducting an inventory of seized forest products to determine which are up for donation so that these could be used as construction materials for school buildings, desks, tables and the like. (Phoebe Jen Indino)
