12 sawmills padlocked in North Cotabato

COTABATO CITY ,Philippines  – Authorities yesterday ordered the closure of about a dozen sawmills in North Cotabato that are processing timber smuggled out of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Police operatives led by Superintendent Alex Tagum, chief of the Public Safety Office of the North Cotabato provincial police, seized 6,135 board feet of lumber from the sawmills near the Rio Grande de Mindanao in Barangay Lumayong in Kabacan town.

Tagum said the sawmills had also supplied lumber to North Cotabato’s Carmen and Pikit towns and Kidapawan City.

Barangay officials said sawmill workers released more than 50 logs to the river before the policemen came.

Tagum said they would file charges against the operators of the sawmills. The sawmills were ordered padlocked last year but had resumed operations after a few months.

ARMM‘s newly-installed officer-in-charge Mujiv Hataman declared a moratorium on logging operations in the region after floodwaters spawned by tropical storm ‘Sendong’, carried logs that destroyed houses in Iligan City.

 The Army’s 65th Infantry Battalion led by Lt. Col. Seigred Espina, recently confiscated an improvised log cutter in a sawmill in Barangay Lidasan, Kapai, Lanao del Sur.

Meanwhile, in Iligan City, environment officials are supervising the cutting of logs carried by floodwaters from Kapai, Lanao del Sur.

As ordered by national authorities, the said logs will be used for the construction of houses for flood victims.  – With Lino dela Cruz