They also accused some poachers of proceeding with unabated illegal logging in the forests of this typhoon-ravaged municipality.

While also complaining for partially receiving low quality lumber for house construction from the local social welfare office here, the calamity victims bared that logs illegally gathered from coastal villages are being sold to a certain Felix Malto, the lone holder of transport permit reportedly authorized by the DENR.

"For over a year now, we never had finished constructing our house due to lack of lumber materials despite the fact that there was ample supply of logs in Dingalan," the homeless residents, mostly from barangay Paltic, lamented.

Of the town’s 11 barangays, Paltic was the hardest hit. The entire village was nearly buried under 10 feet of silt and muck, rocks and debris and other materials brought by landslides, mudflows and floods.

The town was smothered by tropical storms Violeta, Winnie and Yoyong in November 2004.

With the thousand of logs and uprooted trees which can be milled into good lumber, all of the homeless victims could already have provided a decent shelter, a former town councilor here said.

The typhoon victims also complained that only non-commercial lumber were distributed to them while the good quality ones are being transported by Malto.

Eduardo Pujeda, vice-chairman of the militant Justice for Peace and Action Group (JPAG-Aurora) told the Manila Bulletin that Malto is engaged in buying freshly cut logs coming from the coastal barangays of San Luis in the guise of salvaged logs.

Thousand of logs swamped Dingalan shoreline at the height of the typhoons that struck Luzon provinces in 2004, where hundred of people perished.

Pujeda also bared that illegal loggers used to pay Malto an amount of R14.50 per board foot in exchange of documents to make it appear that the lumber were part of the retrieved uprooted trees.

In a mobile phone interview, community environment officer Reynaldo Estudillo said that there was no illegal logging in the town, adding that Malto has been granted by the DENR and Natural Resources Development Corp. (NRDC) to engage in the retrieval and milling of drifted logs in Dingalan.

Estudillo said that there was an agreement allowing Malto to mill and transport 60 percent of all the logs which were retrieved shortly after the November 2004 typhoons.

Under the scheme, 40 percent of the milled logs shall be distributed to typhoon victims.