Police foil attempt to smuggle lumbers to Cotabato City

GEN. SANTOS CITY ---- Lawmen seized 13,000 board feet of undocumented lumbers in an operation in the seaside Palimbang town in Sultan Kudarat on Wednesday.The forest products, cut from timbers poached in a protected watershed in Barangay Malisbong, a coastal village in Sultan Kudarat, were to be delivered to Cotabato City using a five-tonner diesel stern drive boat. Some workers were loading the lumbers into the watercraft when policemen arrived, responding to tips relayed by local residents,” said Supt. Romeo Galgo, Jr, a ranking staff of the Police Regional Office 12 (PRO-12) in Gen. Santos City. Galgo said the anti-illegal logging raid was carried out by a team of combined personnel of the municipal police offices in Palimbang and nearby Maitum town in Sarangani. The raiding team was backed by combat-ready policemen from the 3rd Maneuver Company of the Regional Public Safety Battalion under PRO-12.Officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources estimated at P390,000 the value of the impounded lumbers.The police also held for questioning Pagal Dabpil, the skipper of the boat to be used in transporting the contraband from Barangay Malisbong to a lumberyard to Cotabato City.Galgo said investigators are now validating the reported involvement of Nosradin Tacbil, an incumbent barangay councilor in Malisbong, in the attempt to smuggle the illegal lumbers from Palimbang to Cotabato City.