Trees or traffic?
For Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Rogelio Singson, one has to be sacrificed for the other.
“Maraming mga puno na nanda-dyan sa aming road right-of-way (There are many trees on our road right-of-way). So it’s a choice. Do we leave it here and have a narrow road?” Singson asked in an ambush interview with Cebu Daily News last Friday when he attended the presentation and approval of rehabilitation plans of Yolanda-affected areas.
Singson assured that the affected communities were consulted and that people from other places should not meddle in the issue.
“We leave it up to the community. By community, meaning those who are affected. Hindi yung nagre-react, nagrereklamo ay taga labas (People outside affected areas should not complain),” Singson said.
Genuine consultations with the areas in question were affected, he added, pointing out that they have been facing complaints about traffic.
“The solution to traffic is increased capacity. We need to develop and restore and improve our national road networks,” he said.
The DPWH is ready to answer cases filed against the agency, he added.
Several DPWH road projects have received opposition and complaints from environmentalists for sacrificing trees in the name of progress, the latest of which is the popular “tree tunnel” in Bulan, Sorsogon where DPWH started cutting century-old trees.
Also last month, protests were raised in Los Baños, Laguna where trees were cut along a road near Mt. Makiling, the country’s first national park. In Pangasinan, environmentalists and church groups petitioned the government to stop the “slaughter” of 1,829 trees marked for cutting and earth balling as approved by the environment department.
People in Iloilo filed a complaint against the DPWH for cutting several heritage trees along Gen. Luna highway while in Cebu, there were petitions late last year to protect 154 century-old trees along the highway from Naga to Carcar cities.
Several online petitions have been passed around urging the DPWH to stop cutting down trees, many of which are centuries old, to make way for road projects. Netizens who initiated and signed the petition call the events as a “tree-cutting rampage by the DPWH.”
“Thousands of trees all over the Philippines, many of them century-old, have been cut down for road widening and infrastructure development projects of the DPWH. Many more trees face the same fate. In several cases, road widening was deemed unnecessary,” read a petition by a certain Ivan Henares at change.org.
He called on the DPWH and the DENR to stop all tree-cutting activities for road projects until a review of this policy is undertaken wherein a mechanism for genuine public consultation and a detailed scientific assessment of the impacts of cutting the trees are provided.
In Cebu City, there were cases of missing trees as a result of DPWH-7 road projects such as those on S. Osmeña Road.
The DENR-7 also plans to file a complaint with the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas the cutting down of a balete tree along M. Velez Street.
“We’ll face the cases,” Singson said.
When asked if there is any standing order to expedite tree-cutting activities for road projects, Singson answered, “The only order is, we have to do our job. Kung hindi kami gagawa sa kalye, rereklamuhan pa rin kami (People will still complain if we don’t work on the roads). It’s a choice between development or replacement of trees.”