Cimatu says DENR hiring 100 lawyers

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources plans to hire over a hundred lawyers to speed up the resolution of lower level cases, including land claims and disputes.

Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu wants each of the 140 Community Environment and Natural Resources Offices in the country to have at least one lawyer, who would attend to cases that could be readily be resolved at the community level and not at the regional or national levels.

Cimatu said assigning a full-time lawyer in every CENRO was crucial to improving the DENR’s capability to deliver “immediate and meaningful services at the community level.”

“The CENROs are my front liners. If the DENR succeeds or fails, it is because of our CENROs,” Cimatu said.