We take exception to Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson’s statement that only people who live near trees that are marked for removal in favor of wider roads should have a say about their fate.
Secretary Singson claimed that wherever workers of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DWPH) felled trees that stood in the way of road projects, members of the affected community were consulted beforehand.
To the good secretary, a requisite for any tree-cutting should be genuine consultation with stakeholders who are properly informed of the true cost of permanently losing life-giving trees in favor of a paved road to lighten vehicular traffic.
The “consent” shown by the DPWH as proof of consultation is a rubber stamp certificate of a barangay captain, signing a pro-forma letter which states that he has no objection to cutting down trees, and neither do his constituents whom he has allegedly consulted.
Can the DPWH name the good citizens and the dates of their pulong-pulong sessions where they were told that trees provided shade, oxygen and natural beauty – like the giant Narra and a half-a-century-old balete tree on M. Velez Street – were unwanted obstructions for road widening just a stone’s throw from the Provincial Capitol?
Can the DPWH bring forth any Cebuano in his right mind, who agrees to have over 80 fire trees on S. Osmeña Road ripped out overnight in March – not earth-balled and carefully transplanted –– but yanked by the roots and hauled off to some unidentified dumpsite?
Not likely. Not even the private contractor of the road rehabilitation, who now faces a criminal charge for illegal destruction of trees, would own up to the wholesale death of ornamental trees whch were planted almost a decade ago by the Cebu city government, making the trees, by all right, government property.
We give greater benefit of the doubt to the Cebuanos’ sanity and awareness of the disruptive force of Climate Change; that if Cebuanos had been told, in full transparency and in a timely manner, that the DPWH was about to take the law into its own hands again and take down more trees in the heart of Cebu City, the queen city that is choking on it’s own runaway urbanization in a scorching summer that begs relief from the lack of open spaces, parks and greenery, residents would be angry.
That they would tell the DPWH to stop and find an engineering solution that would incorporate existing trees in the design of the road.
It was too late for the pre-war “balete” tree on M. Velez Street that got hacked to a dry stump by the DPWH-supervised contractor and replanted somewhere else to die.
But after the loss was exposed in Cebu Daily News and other media outlets, guess what? The DPWH-7 said it wouldn’t touch the rest of the trees by the roadside, and would instead redesign a wider road around the trees.
No, Mr. Secretary, the DPWH does not have the consent of Cebuanos to destroy trees in cavalier fashion, just to meet a contractor’s deadline.
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