MANILA, Dec. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- The Philippine House of Representatives committee on environment and natural resources has approved a bill seeking a 25-year total log ban nationwide.

    Representative Leovigildo Banaag, chairman of the committee, said the measure contained stiffer penalties to ensure successful implementation of the law and to avoid a repeat of the havoc wrought by the recent typhoons which left nearly 1,500 people deador missing, the ABS-CBN news channel reported Wednesday.

    But the committee did not include a proposal in the bill to make illegal logging a heinous crime.

    "The death penalty proposal is difficult. It's a burning issue," Banaag said.

    One of the salient features of the bill is a provision that bans cutting on "primary and secondary growth forests" in the country, Representative Juan Miguel Zubiri said.

    Some congressmen expressed reservations on the proposed legislation, saying aside from workers who would be jobless once the logging companies closed down their operations, a total log ban would also mean lost taxes on the part of the government, closure of the local wood processing mills, and the increased price of imported wood.

    Despite opposition from some sectors, Banaag said he was optimistic that the House would approve the measure in January.

    Meanwhile, Philippine Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Michael Defensor Wednesday clarified that private plantations are not covered by the proposed implementation of a total log ban.

    "Those who have planted trees on their own in the past can cut the trees in the future on a sustainable level," Defensor said.

    President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Wednesday ordered a special government task force to identify and prosecute major illegal loggers blamed for deadly landslides that wiped out entire towns in the northern Philippines.

    She said anti-illegal logging task force head Victor Corpus andEnvironment Secretary Michael Defensor were being given "one month from today to identify, investigate and prosecute the big-time illegal loggers, starting from the hardest hit disaster areas."

    Officials have blamed widespread logging for the floods and landslides triggered by successive storms, which caused at least 2.2 billion pesos (39.29 million US dollars) in property, infrastructure and agriculture losses.

    Arroyo has appropriated 500 million pesos (8.93 million dollars)to finance the reconstruction and rehabilitation of calamity-struck areas.

    More than 10 children have died of diarrhoea or dysentery in the storm areas and fears of further sickness as well as an outbreak of malaria are rising due to the wet conditions and a lack of clean drinking water, UN agencies warned.

    Of some 800,000 people affected by the disaster, 350,000 were children under the age of 15, officials said.

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