Picop men laud Alvarez; resumption still uncertain

Some 8,000 workers and employees of Picop Resources Inc. lauded Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Heherson Alvarez yesterday for approving the company’s annual operation plan (AOP) that would enable it to operate for another six months.

Pascasio Trugillo, president of the Picop labor union, said that with the signing of the AOP, the only integrated pulp and paper mill in the country might still resume operations but only until March 2002.

He said Picop’s closure, scheduled on Oct. 31, would immediately cause untold misery and dislocation to the already impoverished Caraga region. Aside from contributing P200 million in annual taxes, the company employs 3,000 direct workers and another 5,000 indirectly.

However, Trugillo said the signing addressed only a part of the problem. He said that for the last two years, they had been having sleepless nights every time the signing of the AOP had been delayed, practically shutting down forestry operations and the paper mill for lack of raw materials.

He said they would be more grateful to Alvarez if he could also give Picop the same treatment he recently afforded foreigners through a 120,790-hectare grant in the Caraga region.

The predominantly Singaporean and New Zealand investors promised Alvarez they would eventually establish a pulp and paper mill after five to eight years.

In effect, Trugillo said the secretary assured these foreigners a long-term tenure to the forest land and plantation, unlike Picop which has an existing multibillion-peso paper plant.

This is most unfair to Picop, which has to live on a year-to-year basis because of the yearly AOP requirement as compared to the favored alien newcomers, he said.

He said Picop is a Philippine company with more than 50 years of world-class track record in tree farming and forest management and has had a pulp and paper mill for almost 30 years.

Because of the big investment involved, Trugillo said the company was granted a "presidential warranty" before its establishment to assure the paper plant of raw materials. The DENR, however, rendered this inutile with its regulatory obstacles like the yearly AOP, he added.