DENR to hire more than a hundred thousand 'green' workers

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines’ environment department will hire more than a hundred thousand workers in the country’s upland regions as part of government efforts to create more jobs. An estimated 111,536 “green collar" workers will be hired by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) “to intensify government’s income-generating services under the Comprehensive Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program (Cleep)." The workers will be hired under the DENR-Cleep’s two major programs such as the Upland Development Program (UDP) and the “Bantay Gubat" (BG) project, Environment Secretary Joselito L. Atienza said. Under the UDP, the government will hire some 52,425 upland farmers to “to plant forest and fruit tree seedlings, including high-value cash crops." Some 49,318 hectares of upland areas and around 2,000 hectares of mangrove areas has been allotted for the program, allowing the farmers to undertake “reforestation and agroforestry activities." Under the agroforestry scheme, each farmer will be paid P3,270 a month to plant cash crops, an initiative that will earn P23,270 per annum. “Each worker will get as much as P19,400 to defray the cost and services for seedling production (P8,500) and planting and maintenance (P10,900)," the DENR said in a statement. Priority areas for reforestation are watersheds, stream banks, mangrove areas, and open and denuded forestlands not covered by any DENR-issued tenurial instrument like community-based forest agreement but needing immediate rehabilitation. More than 20 million forest and fruit-bearing trees are expected to be planted under UDP’s reforestation and agroforestry components. The Cordillera Administrative Region topped the UDP-component list with 7,733 hectares (has.) followed by Regions 5 and 10 with 4,841 has. (4, 601 has. upland, 240 has. mangrove) and 4,246 has. (4,126 has. upland, 120 has. mangrove), respectively. Other areas targetted under the UDP-component include Region 2 with 3,752 has. (3,694 has. upland, 102 has. mangrove); Region 9,2,725 has. (2,398 has. upland, 327 has. mangrove); Region 8, 3,706 has. (3,680 has. upland, 26 has. mangrove); Region 3, 3,674 has. (3,572 has. upland, 102 has. mangrove); Region 13, 3,551 has. (3,346 has. upland, 211 has. mangrove); Region 11, 3,274 has. (3,244 has. upland, 30 has. mangrove). Region 12, 3,152 has. (3,041 has. upland, 111 has. mangrove); Region 6, 2,479 has. (2,336 has. upland, 143 has. mangrove); Region 4B, 2,418 has. (2,188 has. upland, 230 has. mangrove); Region 4A, 2,090 has. (2,043 has. upland, 47 has. mangrove); Region 1, 1,910 has. (1,765 has. upland, 145 has. mangrove); Region 7, 1,621 has. (1,421 has. upland, 200 has. mangrove); and National Capital Region, 145 has. (135 has. upland, 10 has. mangrove). Next: Govt to hire forest guards to detect timber poaching Govt to hire forest guards to detect timber poaching Meanwhile, under the project’s BG component, 59,111 qualified upland residents will be hired as forest guards, earning P3,000 monthly while conducting “foot patrol to detect timber poaching while monitoring for any sign of forest fire." Besides being asked to collect seeds while on patrol, each “Bantay Gubat" worker will be assigned to monitor 342 hectares each, or a total of 6.2 million hectares of forest lands. For the BG component, CAR likewise has the biggest share in the BK pie with 8,898 has., followed by Region 4B (7,434), Region 2 (7,404) and Region 3 (4,650). Following next are Region 8 (4,062), Region 13 (4,050), Region 11 (3,514), Region 12 (2,782), Region 10 (2,663), Region 4A (1,896), Region 5 (1,932), Region 6 (1,809), Region 9 (1,418), Region 1 (1,313), Region 7 (470), and the National Capital Region (17). “The Upland Development Program and the Bantay Gubat Project form part of President Arroyo’s endeavor to provide green collar jobs to society’s most vulnerable sectors by giving them access to short-term employment opportunities, which in turn, will give them economic resiliency to respond to the anticipated adverse impacts of the ongoing worldwide economic downturn," Atienza said. He added that the environment department’s special jobs program “takes a four-pronged approach to creating emergency work in the uplands as it addresses forest protection and rehabilitation of watersheds and mangrove areas, while opening up job opportunities for income generation and food and crop production." - GMANews.TV