PNoy’s DENR officials do not understand plain English

Sometime last year after the Commission on Audit released its findings that the National Greening Program (NGP) was a failure, I wrote President Benigno Aquino 3rd suggesting that if he wants to save the remainder of the program, he must personally make surprise random checks on NGP sites to see if trees are really growing there.

I explained that previous presidents had made the mistake of swallowing the rosy reports of their Environment Secretaries hook, line and sinker and as a result, it is good if 5 percent of all the seedlings planted in government tree planting programs since the time of his mother, President Corazon Aquino, have grown into trees.