PILI, Camarines Sur --- Farmer-beneficiaries of the Rotary Village in Bgy. Tinangis here are complaining why they haven’t been paid after over two months since they were allegedly commissioned by the regional office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to prepare 87,000 potted seedlings of various trees for a reforestation project.

        This, despite reports that a huge mobilization fund had already been released following the signing of a memorandum of agreement last September 29, 2008 for the said project.

        But that is not the big story as Bicol Mail this week was told that the farmers’ grumblings were only a tip of an iceberg.

        Interviewed by this paper, the disgruntled farmers who are members of the Rotary Village Corps Forest Development Cooperative based in Bgy. Tinangis said they have been approached by DENR personnel to undertake seedling preparations for a reforestation project within the vast expanse of Barangays Curry and Tinangis of this capital town.

        The project, according to the farmers, was supposed to cover a total of 434 hectares of forest land straddled across the shoulder of Mt. Isarog where the amount involved, we discovered, would reach P4.9 million (P2.475M for Tinangis and P2.471M for Curry).

        The farmers, who asked not to be identified at the moment, alleged they have been approached by DENR personnel from the regional office with a Memorandum of Agreement already signed by DENR Regional Director Director Jocelin Marcus Fragada and the other DENR officials concerned.

        They were reportedly promised to be paid for every pot of tree seedling once the counterpart village coop officials signed the memorandum of agreement that would be needed to start implementation of the multi-million reforestation project.

        Reportedly, the project was supposed to be part of the Bicol River Basin Watershed Management Office, with the agro-forestry component to be implemented by DENR. For that component alone, P129 million were reportedly allocated for similar reforestation projects in various points in the Second Congressional District of Camarines Sur.

        It was also learned from PENRO that the agro-forestry project covers three districts of the province excluding Partido area which has different topographical level and status and separate reforestation projects.

        It was not made clear where exactly the other reforestation projects within the district would be, or had been, situated.

        Reportedly, the MOA was eventually signed by the village’s coop officers last September, this year, a copy of which Bicol Mail tried to secure but in vain.

        Dir. Fragada, in a telephone interview, admitted that he has a copy of the MOA, fully signed by both parties and duly notarized by a counsel.

        When asked if any amount was so far released, Fragada answered in the affirmative but could not give the exact amount because records were not immediately available during the telephone interview.

        He also dismissed report that the farmers had been unpaid for their labor adding that his office has in fact been providing jobs and livelihood to the affected farmers.

        Expressing irritation, the DENR Director said charges of wrongdoing against his office, if any, should be substantiated and free from malice. He assured his office is doing nothing wrong in advancing the agro-forestry development program of the governm

Rotary village

        The Rotary Village is a joint project of the Rotary Club of Naga, the Metro Naga Water District and Plan International. It was set up outside a reservation area almost ten years ago to accommodate some 35 family-settlers who needed to be relocated from the protected 300-hectare Tinangis-Curry watershed area which is a major potable water source of the water district.

        Plan International extended a grant for the Rotary Club to purchase the proposed resettlement site while the Rotary Club itself provided modest duplex homes and opportunities for livelihood for the relocated farming settlers without disturbing the watershed area that on the other hand should be maintained and preserved, as until now they are being maintained and preserved, by the Metro Naga Water District.

        A coop officer said that when the seedlings were deemed ready for replanting, the DENR instructed them to plant the seedlings within an adjacent farmland. But that was not possible, the farmers said, because the adjacent land is a private property and is in fact planted with corn and sugarcane. They told Bicol Mail that when they tried to, workers from the adjacent farmland chased them with bolos.

        Informed of the farmers’ plight, members of the Rotary Club of Naga smelled something fishy about the so-called reforestation project. They feared that the Rotary Village, or its settlers, would be unwittingly used in a multi-million scam, especially that they learned that a DENR report on reforestation project in Tinangis had been marked as “on-going” as of September 2008 when actually there was none.

A serious case

        “Not finding an actual place to point for such reforestation project, where initial government funds may have already been released, the conspiring DENR officials may have, or had already identified the reservation area and the adjoining Rotary Village as supposed site-beneficiaries where young trees had already been planted by the settlers and the MNWD as part of the settlers’ livelihood project,” said a Rotary Club member who asked not to be identified pending their investigation of the case.

        He said that unless they intervened to ferret out the truth about the project, another huge amount of government money would line the pockets of grafters and robbers in government.

        Another source told Bicol Mail that the DENR planned to report as eventually completed reforestation projects 117 hectares in Bgy. Tinangis and a much larger area of 317 hectares in the site that embraces the Rotary Village.

        This report, if true, is a serious matter that the DENR regional office and the Bicol River Basin Watershed Management Office which is directly under the Office of the President would have to explain, the unnamed Rotarian source said.

        Further alarmed by report that such seedlings include fruit-bearing trees, the Rotarian source explained that fruit-bearing trees should not be planted within or near the watershed area because they require periodic insecticide and pesticide spraying which are harmful to potable water source.