Environment agency turns to NBI to boost on missing trees

Deeper sleuthing may provide answers.

The help of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) 7 is being asked to find out how 79 trees vanished overnight from a public road in Cebu City, a loss which the road contractor has blamed on “flooding” from a broken water pipe.

The request for NBI assistance was contained in a letter signed yesterday by Regional Director Isabelo Montejo of the Department of Envrionment and Natural Resources (DENR 7).

A second letter from the DENR requests Cebu City Councilor Dave Tumulak to issue an affidavit describing what he saw in video footage of security cameras that recorded the removal of the trees from S. Osmeña Road on the weekend of March 29 and 30.

The two letters will be delivered today to the NBI and Councilor Tumulak, said DENR 7 spokesman Eddie Llamedo.

He said the agency would like Tumulak to give an account of what he viewed that made the councilor state in news interviews when the controversy first broke out that a backhoe of WT Construction was clearly recorded hauling trees from what used to be the center island, from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.

“He showed us the video but it was a spliced one,” Llamedo told Cebu Daily News.

What DENR representatives were allowed to view, said Llamedo, did not include the critical dates of the weekend when the trees were first noticed missing by City Councilor Nida Cabrera, who exposed the disappearance in a privilege speech on April 2.

Last week, DENR 7 filed criminal charges of “illegal destruction” of trees against six officials of WT Construction Inc. and its project engineer in charge of the P289 million road rehabilitation implemented by the Department of Public Works and Highways.

The contractor has flatly denied cutting down or uprooting the trees, and said they were being unfairly made to appear as villains in the public eye.

STRICT POLICY

Tumulak, head of the Cebu Command Center, came under fire for refusing to give copies of the videotape of the security cameras which DENR requested in a letter to Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama.

Tumulak told colleagues in the Council during an April 14 executive session that as head of the city’s peace and order program and C3, “I stand by the strict policy that we cannot give a copy of the footages of the security camera because, in effect, it will disclose its location.”

The councilor said he would only make the video available during the trial or any stage of the proceedings when the court so orders.

He also challenged the DENR to “gather more evidence other than the video” and said that viewing the video “is just a step in getting the whole story.”

When the DENR finally filed a criminal complaint in the prosecutor’s office last week, it submitted as evidence newspaper clippings, affidavits of three DENR personnel, but no witnesses or videotape.

The DENR complaint rejected the contractor’s explanation of “flooding” by a busted water pipe.

It said “logic dictates” that the private contractor be held responsible for the loss of the trees because the contractor had the means and the motive: WT Construction stood to benefit from removing the trees in order to meet its work deadline and “no one would dare use heavy equipment or machinery to do such things without getting advantage”.

The trees, mostly “fire trees” planted by the city government seven years ago, were supposed to be earth-balled and carefully transplanted to designated public sites in Cebu City, including the San Pedro Calungsod Shrine.

DENR 7 said conditions of a permit to earth-ball by the DPWH were violated.

CONCRETE ISLAND

The other day, Mayor Rama in a closed-door meeting with WT Construction and the DPWH, told them to restore the concrete island where the trees were planted and have it landscaped.

He also asked them to add sidewalks to make the six-lane highway more pedestrian-friendly and attractive – but insisted that the road rehabilitation be completed on schedule in October.

The mayor distanced himself from the controversy, saying it was the DPWH’s decision to demolish the center island and that the fate of the missing trees was best left for the court to decide.

Immediately after the controversy broke on April 2, Councilor Tumulak was quoted by CDN as saying he saw the proof in the video of security cameras.

“The video speaks for itself,” he said.

“WT shouldn’t dodge responsibility for this because it’s clear in the CCTV camera that they removed the trees.”

A cease and desist order was issued by the DENR against the DPWH but the stop order covers only the earth-balling of remaining trees. Rehabilitation work and concreting continues on S. Osmeña Road, where traffic has been rerouted since mid-March./EILEEN G. MANGUBAT