After a couple of days in Surigao, I continued my trip to Compostela Valley where I get to visit another CBFM site. I have been here a year ago. From the municipalty of Marihatag, my next stop was San Francisco, Agusan del Sur. San Frans as it is called by  locals is a lot different than it was years ago. There are more business establishments, clean wide road, more banks, more people and it seems that the local economy is booming. I heard it is going to be a city soon. Though it took me hours to get an air-conditioned  bus from the terminal, it pays to wait; it is a good cape from the dusty road of Surigao del Sur. I slept on my way toCompostela Valley. Actually, even in my sleep, I would know when I am already Comval. The temperature is quite different, its cooler, I do not know why, perhaps due to its higher elevation and higher density of vegetation.

    Comval gives me a feeling as if I am in the countryside of the US; maybe with more trees and rivers, it would feel like I’m in West Virginia. Comval has big four-lane road, not much residential houses along the road, there are sprouting seedling vendors, many big trucks passing by, and it’s foggy specially if you arrived late in the afternoon.  It is a very calm, still and cool place.

     There were however, some things I observed peculiar, there are more piled logs on the road now than before. There is only maybe an interval of 100 to 200 meters and there’s another   pile of cut logs on the road ready to be hauled. In fact, I saw many laborers loading trucks with logs and few trucks transporting them. Most of these logs were owned by big businessmen and other private individuals. Some people said  these logs came from privately owned lands. However, some of the informants I met that said that most of these came from the public land or from the TLA area of the previous companies.

    The increased demand for seedlings is perhaps the reason why many individuals ventured into selling seedlings. These seedling vendors along the road are privately owned and others are from cooperatives just like the one owned by SAROMCO. 

     After a short rest at Comval  hotel I visited the San Roque Multi –purpose Cooperative or SAROMCO. The cooperative is a CBFM holder in San Roque,Nabunturan, Compostela Valley. This cooperative gives a good impression to community forestry researchers. They seemed to have a successful CBFM program because they already have a  sawmill, they have implemented several government forestry programs and they have been assisted by organizations from the previous programs and projects. Lending institutions   offered and showed confidence for them, they have also a considerable stand of wood stocks ready for utilization, and perhaps they are one of the first CBFM holders having issued a Wood Processing Permit or (WPP). 

     At the back of this facade are terrible problems, anyone would not expect from a simple peoples organization. They are now facing a case filed against them for cuddling an illegal bandsaw and case from a certain businessman who lost his truck during one of their business operations. Aside from these, are other complications brought about by other business deals between them and other big-time businessmen. 

    Another problem they have is their RUP. They applied for RUP to utilize their harvestable gmelina yet they were trapped with bureaucracy and did not get the permit until now. According to them, the previous document needed was the stand and stock table, which they had a hard time completing. Today, the situation got even worst; they were required to present the tally sheet of the whole 30-50 hectares of gmelina plantation. This means that they need to scale again, rewrite, and collate the dimension and other statistics of every tree standing. That is no joke, each tree standing in harvestable stage has to be scaled. All these are expected to be completed by the grassroots cooperative without assistance fro m DENR. I ask why they would not request DENR’s help. They said that they have no money—and it is literally needed when you ask for help.

    Prior to the start of the plantation program, the common slogan “plant a hectare of gmelina tree for a million tomorrow” encouraged them to participate. Today, members are impatient and could no longer wait for their RUP.

     They wanted to reap from their hard labor of planting and maintaining these trees before they die—other members already died before they could even see the logs cut. The biggest worry today is that, by the time the RUP is granted all the harvestable trees might already been illegally cut and sold.

How long will SAROMCO  have to endure the cycle of red tape and legal battles? As of now the biggest question they have in order to comply with the technicalities required for their RUP is, how long it will take them finish the log tally sheets? They already consumed about 500 pages of yellow paper already and lots of tuba wine. Anyone please help!