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“Saan-saan po ba kayo nagtatanim?” - Revilla: Senator Ramon Bong Revilla, Jr. quizzed the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on the status of the implementation of the government’s National Greening Program (NGP) vis-a-vis the worsening effects of climate change during the Senate plenary debate on the FY 2023 budget of the agency.

The veteran lawmaker asked the DENR how many seedlings have been planted since the inception of the program and the survival rate of the trees. According to the DENR through the Department’s sponsor Senator Cynthia Villar, P58 billion has been spent since 2011 amounting to 1.855 billion seedlings with a 78% survival rate.

Revilla was quick to ask where the seedlings were planted, prodding the agency to pinpoint where those surviving 1.45 billion trees would be found. The solon shared that during the series of relief operations he conducted recently, he observed that many mountains are in denuded state and forests are hardly spotted, in contrast to the report of DENR that the implementation of NGP has been successful.