Again, quarrying money

Ben Contreras

ENVIRONMENT Secretary Gina Lopez announced in Davao City that “DENR is opening up a civil society arm” to combat illegal activities that destroys our environment. There are a few in the city that are true to their advocacy and I hope they will be tapped for the job.

The inside stories of quarrying in the city will dwarf the Ajinomoto controversy. The involvement of city officials, politicians and those who are tasked to protect our environment is quite deep.

SM, S&R, Mega Dike, coastal road, highise buildings, condotels, vast areas of land that need filling materials, road widening, new medium scale malls, etc… you can just imagine the volume of soil, sand and gravel that are needed to meet the demand of these construction activities. And yet, you get only P9 million in annual income from all these. Are we missing something here?

Corruption made all these possible.

While having coffee one Sunday morning at Luxe Hotel, a man called out my name from nowhere. Then the man approached me and engaged me in a conversation. I didn’t recognize him at first until the topic we talked about gave me a clue about who the guy I was talking with was. It’s Glenn Bañez.

His parting words were, “Ben, write something good about me.” I said, “What good have you done so far?”

It was not meant to insult him. It was meant to awaken him. Perhaps, questioning Zaldy Ocon about the low income from the quarrying business and his proposal to increase the revenue from P25 to P200 per cubic meter would be it–the good thing that I could write about him. But the operators disagreed in that meeting.

The opinion of the operators is that, all the city government needs to do is improve collection and get rid of red tape or corruption. How do you prove lost income from this business? Again, if some operators could only open their mouth without fear of reprisal, then that would be it.

I bet Ocon is not the man who would be able to get rid of the red tape and the corruption in this business. Citing Bible verses won’t help either!

One man has expressed willingness to shed light on what he knew and experienced if Secretary Lopez would be willing to listen.

• •

The no-nonsense drive against drugs has posed a great problem for the city government on what to do with those who “surrendered” to the authorities. The Church has volunteered to help–thanks to Archbishop Ledesma.

Councilor Bong Lao has in black and white suggested to the city government to ask businessman James Giam to donate a portion of his land in Indahag as rehabilitation center.

After receiving the formal request, Giam politely rejected the request citing the humiliating experience he had with the current city mayor and that of the past administration regarding the “East Terminal” property which Giam wanted to repossess after the city violated the terms in the Deed of Donation.

Giam won his case in the lower court but the city government appealed. It’s now pending at the Court of Appeals. Whatever the result would be, Giam expressed his “dakong pagmahay” with the city government. I hope the CA will rule in his favor.