Photo by: Andrew Martin via Wikimedia Commons

Despite the busy budget deliberations at the Philippine House of Representatives, a bill has been passed by the lower chamber that allows the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to cut, ball, transfer, and dispose of trees to give way to infrastructure projects.

With the endorsement of House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and Majority Floor Leader Rodolfo Fariñas, the committee on natural resources stamped its approval on House Bill 4208. In essence, House Bill 4208 grants the DPWH exemption from securing tree cutting, earth-balling, transfer, disposal, and planting clearances and permits from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) when implementing national or local infrastructure projects. These infrastructure projects include, but are not limited to, clearing of road right-of-way and site clearing, development, or preparation.

In the present law, the DENR, as well as its attached agencies, have the exclusive jurisdiction on approving tree-cutting permits, subject to the compliance with certain documentations. Securing these clearances and permits from the DENR serves as its tool for checks and balances to ensure that the environment will not be prejudiced when certain infrastructure projects are already commenced.

The haphazard passage of the bill may be attributed to President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent pronouncements to “cut red tape” in government offices. However, the president himself did not bother to conceal his inclination towards shortcuts in the processes, as he even asked permission from Congress to grant him emergency powers to address the worsening traffic situation in the country’s metropolitan area. When granted, the emergency powers will dispense with some parts of the country’s procurement process, which were formulated to ensure that contracts entered into by the government will not be disadvantageous to the general public.

Meanwhile, in his attempt to convince the upper chamber of the Congress to quickly adopt the measure, Marikina Representative Bayani Fernando, the author of the bill, said that foresters or “a DENR guy” would have zero knowledge in dictating which trees to cut for purposes of accelerating infrastructure development. Fernando also said that securing various clearances and permits from the DENR only results to the further delay in the implementation of DPWH projects.

“This is the sole province of the road design engineer who has the knowledge and the responsibility in ensuring that this primary design feature is followed. And in no way a forester or a DENR guy would know the requirements of the highway,” he added.