The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said digitization has led to the issuance of 237 notices of violation (NOVs) to factories located in 13 industrial parks in Laguna the past two weeks.
The DENR said it will further streamline permitting procedures by pursuing more digitization measures despite having no budget allocation for these measures this year.
The agency said the 237 factories were found to have been operating without environmental compliance certificates (ECCs) through the use of satellite imagery. The factories were delineated and overlayed in a masterlist of industries with existing ECCs.
“We have substantially completed migrating all data onto a single platform, with the exception of data from one last division in the Mines and Geosciences Bureau. Digitization should address making our procedures more efficient, leading to shorter and more transparent processing permits and applications,” said DENR Secretary Antonia Yulo in a speech delivered by Undersecretary Carlos Primo David at the Mining Philippines International Conference 2023 in Mandaluyong City.
David said DENR has been utilizing geographic information systems since 2013 that can quickly identify all mining areas, whether operating or still being explored.
“For the industry, we hope the digitization will fast track and hasten the processing.
Processing of papers right now admittedly is still quite slow,” David said.
DENR said that at present, processing of permits from the agency takes at least six months which will be substantially reduced once full digitization is implemented.
The DENR has tapped PwC Philippines to do the study on how digitalization will help fasttrack permitting process.
The DENR said the factories issued with NOVs will be given a chance to explain but were slapped with penalties of P50,000 each. Total collection is at P12 million from the said move.
“The system removed a very manual way of surveillance. The main concern really is environmental protection, penalties are secondary,” David said.
The DENR hopes digitization would help resolve issues involving ECCs, proper land use and mining, among others. -Jed Macapagal
