LEYTE Rep. Richard Gomez is urging the House Committee on Natural Resources to recommend the filing of criminal and administrative charges with the Office of the Ombudsman against Palompon Mayor Ramon Oñate and his wife Lourdes for supposed gross violation of the land and environmental laws.
He told the House committee leadership to “come up with a report and a conclusion” that the Oñate couple, along with complicit employees of the regional office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources “be charged” for violating the Forestry Act and
environmental management laws for massive pollution of water, soil and air resources.
“I recommend that with these offenses, the committee would come up with a report and a conclusion that we will file this to the
Ombudsman,” he cited.
He authored House Resolution No. 778 prompting an inquiry into the blatant violations of land use and environmental management laws
in the municipalities of Palompon and Albuera in Leyte’s District 4.
He asked the panel to look into how the DBSN Farms Agriventures Corp. has polluted the water, soil and air resources in Palompon and
Albuera where the firm is operating.
Oñate is the president and chief executive officer of DBSN with a 55,000-capacity chicken dressing plant in Albuera and a breeder farm
in Palompon with a capacity of 88,000 chicken heads.
An assessment study of the University of Santo Tomas’ Department of Biological Sciences showed that solid wastes from the dressing
plant polluted the waters of Ormoc Bay.
Collected solid wastes from the Albuera plant were transported to Palompon and dumped on Lot 5150 in Barangay San Joaquin located inside
the perimeter of the Palompon watershed and forest reserve that was
established through Proclamation 212 in 1988.
Gomez said the DENR must cancel the environmental compliance certificate of DBSN “right away because of the pollution happening as
revealed in the test.”
He urged the DENR to excavate the dump where the solid wastes had been dumped and to “transfer all the heads of the different offices of
the DENR Region 8 to other regions.”
He called on the management of the Landbank of the Philippines to “cancel loans in the name of Ramon and Lourdes Oñate” and to file an
estafa case against them and the DBSN Farm “for deceit.”