Forest Officer Denies Political Interference in Logging Probe

And just to clear the air, Deputy Chief Forest Officer John Pinelo is refuting claims that politicians are influencing the Forest Department’s work. He says that’s simply not true, at least not in his office. Pinelo made it clear that their focus is on enforcing the law, not playing politics. He also told News Five that once the department finalizes the charges related to the logging license, he’ll be following up with us. So, we’ll be keeping a close eye on that development.

 

Paul Lopez

“The assertion from the villagers is that these loggers feel emboldened because there is a lack of proper enforcement, a lack of proper frequent presence and there is present from people in positions higher than yours as deputy and higher than the chief forest officer.”

 

John Pinelo, Deputy Chief Forest Officer, Forest Department

“Those three points are false, and I need to clarify that. The department is out there regularly. We don’t report to the chairman or the villagers, so they might not know we are there. But we are out there doing our work every week. We just don’t have enough staff and will never have enough staff to monitor every license. What we do is a rotation schedule and we visit to stamp the logs and make sure they are not breaking the law. So those stories are false narratives and I can categorically say that there is no political influence in what we are doing, at least not on my desk. So nobody out there should feel emboldened, even if they know somebody politically because we are the ones monitoring and the ones with the mandate to manage and the Forest Department will apply the law as long as we find some infraction being made. So that assertion that political powers have us on our knees and we cant get any work done is a lie. Unfortunately that is the first thing people jump at, they make every issue going on political when most of the time it is not. This one I must categorially say it is not.”