Ipra’s power questioned in Coron

Coron Vice Mayor Jim Gerald Pe. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Indigenous People’s Rights Act (Ipra) is being blamed by a local official in the island of Coron, Palawan, as being a tool for corruption by some officials of the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).

Coron Vice Mayor Jim Gerald Pe said in a recent interview the NCIP is conducting indiscriminate claims on islands in the Calamian areas that were known to have no basis on their assertion.

“Basta kung saan po nakita nila, kahit wala pong batayan na mayroon talagang claim ang isang grupo ng tribo dyan ay parati pong kukunin yan (Anywhere they find one even if there’s no basis that a tribe has the right to claim, they will acquire),” said Pe.

The second highest official in the municipality also said the map on the ancestral domain as basis of the NCIP’s claim has not been shown to them.

“Sana po ay mabigyan kami ng mapa na ‘yon, kung hanggang saan yung claim nila.  Hindi yung taon-taon, buwan-buwan, nadadagdagan po yung claim.  Hindi po yung everyday, every month, every year, tuwing magbabalik sila dito, padagdag nang padagdag.  Baka po isang araw pati yung lupa na kinatitirikan ng bahay ko, baka lupaing ninuno na rin (We’re hoping they could show us the map so we’ll know up to what point their claims are, so that it’s not every year, every month, their claim adds up. Everytime they come back here, their claims keep on increasing. We’re afraid the day will come the lot where our houses are built turned out to be under ancestral domain),” said Pe.

He added the more detrimental effects by NCIP’s indiscriminate claims in the area are the halted billions of pesos of potential investments in Coron alone. Incoming and established business entities are both being festered by extortion incidents.

“…Aantayin po nila ang investor na magtayo ng apat na poste bago sila mag-claim para makakuha sila ng pera. Ito po ay nagiging grounds for extortion na sana ay hindi po natin payagan (They will wait for investors to erect their business establishments and impose their claims in order to get money. This [practice] has become grounds for extortion which we shouldn’t allow).”

Within this month, Vice Mayor Pe will be calling for a consensus to be made among the members of the Vice Mayor League in the whole province of Palawan to condemn NCIP’s moves.

He is also calling the attention of the legislative department to immediately look into possibly repealing or amending the Ipra law, which he says is too powerful, yet, too unclear as to its interpretation and implementation.

Divisiveness and hunger among IPs

Due to a claim by a minority of the tribe on Barangay Bulalacao, in the municipality of Coron, a Temporary Testraining Order on the pearl farm operated by Hikari SSP, Inc. was handed down abruptly causing a stop in its operations, affecting the employment of several hundreds of Tagbanua Tribe members.

Affected members of the tribe are now asking for financial and relief assistance caused by the closure of the pearl farm.

Rodolfo Garcia, the Tagbanua tribe spokesperson said that their members are now in the recourse of eating “kurot,” a poisonous root crop just to fill their empty stomachs.

Bulalacao Barangay Chairman Ben Flores supported this claim with teary eyes, adding that his constituents’ late night knocks on his doors are now getting much often, asking for food and concrete actions to prompt the higher officials of the municipality and even of President Benigno Aquino III, to dip their hands to permanently solve this dilemma as this situation is getting more and more of his constituents uneasy that the fear of in-fighting incidents within the tribe is much more possible, causing divisiveness in this once peaceful paradise island.

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