Ibaloi families revive claims against Napocor
By Delmar Cariño
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:01:00 03/11/2008
LA TRINIDAD, BENGUET – Over 50 years after the Ambuklao and Binga dams were built, descendants of the 50 Ibaloi families, whose lands were expropriated for the hydroelectric projects, are renewing their campaign against the supposed breach of promises by the National Power Corp. (Napocor).
Heirs of the Lampitao and Pungayan clans of Barangay Tinongdan in Itogon town accused Napocor of reneging on its commitment to provide jobs and resettlement to every displaced family during the provincial board’s regular meeting last week.
Dr. Eufronio Pungayan, July Lampitao and Alvaro Claudio, third-generation clan members, also assailed Napocor for recognizing simply the “just compensation” of the lands that were submerged by the dams’ reservoir and not their “derivative value” that spoke of ancestral interests that dated back to precolonial years.
Reached for their comments in Manila on Feb. 28, Napocor officials called on those with expropriation claims “to duly submit these claims to our office, if not to the Indigenous Peoples’ Commission office for ancestral lands or domain, for us to address them accordingly.”
Napocor “has never, and will not, renege on its obligations to appropriately expropriate families or individuals whose properties have been affected by any of our power projects,” its corporate communications manager, Dennis Gana, said.
Napocor built the Ambuklao Dam in Bokod town and Binga Dam in Itogon town in the 1950s. However, Ambuklao’s 75-megawatt generators were decommissioned in 2000 due to siltation. Binga’s 100-mw turbines still generate power but need major repairs.
SN Aboitiz Power Hydro Inc. (SNAP Hydro) earned the right to repair the dams and resume their operations after it submitted the highest bid of $325 million in last year’s auction. But the facilities still cannot be transferred to it as Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) has yet to resolve issues surrounding the Ambuklao-Binga plant package.
PSALM is still securing the tenurial agreement for the deal to ensure that SNAP Hydro will continue to use the land and underlying facilities for power generation, even after privatization.
Pungayan urged the provincial board to look into the plight of the 50 Ibaloi families whose lands were flooded by the dams’ construction and who were first resettled in Narra, Palawan, following an agreement with Napocor. Thirty-eight of the families returned because the relocation conditions were not met, he said.
Claudio, 78, said the lands’ seizure by the government had become a nightmare for the Ibaloi. “The broken promises all the more hurt us,” he said.
The descendants expressed fear that their claims might be lost in the corporate transfer of Napocor’s papers and assets to SNAP Hydro. Pungayan questioned the government’s legal and moral authority to transfer to Aboitiz the land and water resources of the Ibaloi, which in the first place, he said, “were not owned by Napocor.”
Pungayan said Napocor had no business privatizing the dams until the families’ claims were finally settled. He said the government’s exercise of its power of eminent domain (expropriation proceedings) resulted in the collection of wealth in favor of the government’s coffers but at the expense of indigenous peoples who were robbed of their lands. With a report from Abigail L. Ho, Inquirer Business
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