ENVIRONMENT department representatives are scheduled to go to City Hall today to view the full roll of the surveillance camera footage that is believed to provide answers to the question on who removed the fire trees along Sergio Osmeña Road in Cebu City.
DENR foresters are expected to execute sworn statements based on what they will see in the footage to bolster the evidence they will be presenting in court against WT Construction Inc., the contractor of the Osmeña Road rehabilitation project.
At least 79 trees have gone missing.
“We received the invitation from the City and we’ll send our CENRO foresters Raul Pasoc and Filemon Embalzado Jr.,” said DENR-7 spokesman Eddie Llamedo.
Cebu City Councilor Dave Tumulak, who heads the City Hall Command Center which controls the cctv system, earlier refused to execute an affidavit after the DENR requested him to do so.
Instead, the councilor urged the DENR representatives to be the one to make the sworn statement after viewing the full footage. Llamedo said they will follow his suggestion.
“It was a request since he earlier told the media what he saw. It was never a demand to compel him to execute the affidavit,” Llamedo said.
“We’ll see what we can do after our representatives view the footage (today). The footage they earlier viewed at City Hall was spliced and basically they didn’t see anything,” he added.
In an executive session last April 14, Tumulak showed March 25 and 26 footage of the area to city councilors together with representatives from DENR and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) 7. The selected footage didn’t show actual removal of the trees.
The councilors set a closed-door viewing of the full footage including those last March 28, 29 and 30 with the actual removal of the trees as earlier said by Tumulak. It was supposed to be shown last Monday but Tumulak said the command center was busy with security monitoring during Holy Week.
The viewing was moved to today.
Once the DENR-7 officials execute affidavits detailing an account of what they viewed in the cctv footage, Llamedo said these will be used as supplementary evidence in the case they filed against WT Construction before the Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office.
Llamedo said they are just waiting for the case to be elevated to the court from the prosecutor before they can ask for a court order to compel the city to furnish them with a copy of the footage from the security cameras.
“That’s why we’re continuing our search for more evidence to strengthen our case so that the prosecutor will find probable cause of the crime and elevate it to court,” Llamedo said.
The DENR is also working closely with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) 7 on the investigation of the missing trees.
Llamedo said the NBI-7 will help them find firsthand witnesses of the tree removal operations at the S. Osmeña Road within its vicinity and have them execute affidavits.