By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
evaluators. “
Last March, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) released a memorandum setting the guidelines for the conduct of third-party performance evaluation of National Greening Program (NGP) plantations planted from 2013 to 2016. The evaluator which may come from state universities and colleges, non-government organizations or civil society organizations which are into environmental and forestry advocacies are tasked to primarily determine if the plantations have posted at least 85 percent survival rates and that the whole site was indeed planted.
Until such time that the memorandum will be implemented, the monitoring and assessment of the NGP accomplishments rests on the Forest Management Bureau, the same office which is implementing the reforestation activity, a situation not dissimilar to students filling up their own report cards.
Why they have to wait for seven years and after spending P30B on the NGP, the government’s most massive reforestation program so far, before they act to correct the questionable arrangement which opens to question the credibility of NGP monitoring and evaluation results is a is a puzzle the agency alone can answer. First, right from the start of the program in 2011, then DENR Secretary Ramon had already seen that auditing will have the effect of improving the survival rate of the seedlings planted and had formally requested the Commission on Audit (COA) asking for special audit possibly on quarterly basis in order to verify the accuracy of accomplishment reports. Nothing came off the request because all the COA had been doing for the program are regular audits.
And in reaction to allegations of corruption in the implementation on the NGP in late 2014, the DENR considered engaging an outfit to conduct a third party audit estimating that the project would cost more than P100M. The move fizzled out and the agency continued to keep the monitoring and evaluation of accomplishments in the NGP in-house like it had been doing with all reforestation programs through the years.
Second, this irregular arrangement in the DENR has also attracted the attention of outsiders. During the re-appointment hearing of Paje in June 2014, Senator Antonio Trillanes had already called for a third party audit branding the accomplishment reports of the DENR as “self-serving data.” It was also one of the rationales of House Resolution No. 382 filed in September 2016 by Congresswoman Divina Grace Yu of the second district of Zamboanga del Sur calling for inquiry into the implementation of the NGP to assess the effectivity of the program.
In its assessment of the efficiency and effectiveness of the NGP released in March 2013, the Philippine Institute of Development Studies had recommended to the DENR the possibility of “employing third party monitors and evaluators at certain levels” to further validate its monitoring and evaluation results.
The decision of the DENR authorities to finally open the NGP to scrutiny by outsiders specifically the sites established in 2013 to 2016 removes all barriers to the audit of the plantations established in 2011 and 2012. Actually, there is a more urgent need for auditors to check on these plantations than on those planted in 2013 to 2016 because being the oldest NGP sites, they could speak volumes of the design and manner of implementation of the NGP.
At any rate, let us hope that with the memorandum, the implementation of the NGP will improve and not remain the same despite the added cost of engaging the services of third party evaluators.
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