WE HAVE written four articles since 2017 about our uninhabited islands in the Philippine archipelago. We cannot understand why our government has no concrete program up to now that will open them for tourism or for settlement by thousands of landless Filipinos who might be interested to acquire land like what was done to Mindanao in the pre-war days when the government was attracting settlers.
Owning land attracted many Ilonggo families to settle in Mindanao especially in Zamboanga and Cotabato provinces, bringing their culture and influence, and even their dialect that is now spoken in the areas where they settled.
For many years we have always known that we have 7,107 islands. With 400 new islands additionally discovered in 2017 we are now a country of 7,507 islands.
What may be considered island is a land mass above sea level at high tide or any given time and can support plant and animal life.
The National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NAMRIA) reports that only 2,000 of the islands are named and inhabited while 5,107 others are still unnamed and with no settlers. We mentioned this in a previous column but it did not seem to attract public interest.
Before writing this article, we sent an e-mailed letter to NAMRIA under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to inform us of the number of unnamed and uninhabited islands particularly in Western Visayas and their specific locations.
What we have in mind is to make them available to Ilonggos who might be interested to explore and develop any of the islands for agriculture or tourism purposes.
Are you interested? Watch out for further announcements from us through this column once we receive NAMRIA’s reply.
We will also let you know of the application process if you wish to own one.
Before foreigners occupy our uninhabited islands, let us encourage Filipinos to settle there first.
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GEM OF THOUGHT
“Success under a good leader is the people’s success.” – Lao Tsu
(For comments or re-actions, please e-mail to jnoveracompany@yahoo.com)/PN
