ILOILO – The Panay Bukidnon indigenous peoples (IPs) in Calinog town will be paid for the aggregates quarried from their ancestral land and used for the construction of the Jalaur River Multipurpose Project (JRMP) Stage II.
The IPs secured the commitment of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) – the implementing agency of the project – and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) during a dialogue on Oct. 10.
The royalty fee would be five percent of the base cost of raw materials extracted from the ancestral land.
Project contractor Daewoo Engineering and Construction Co. of South Korea has been quarrying the ancestral land of the Panay Bukidnon.
“The parties have agreed on the percentage and base cost. There is no actual amount yet,” said Steve Cordero, regional information officer of NIA.
The next thing, Cordero said, would be to determine the volume of the quarried aggregates to come up with the total cost.
Present at the dialogue were JRMP II project manager Engineer Jonel Bores; Atty. Michael Margarico, JRMP II legal counsel; Atty. Cesar Emmanuele Buyco of the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office; Ana Burgos, NCIP regional director; Engineer Jose Roberto Papa Jr. of KRC JV and the project Joint Monitoring Team; engineers Edgardo Labordo and Jouie Calcena of NCIP; Jimmy Lastrilla of the IP community; and Cordero.
The IPs recently called out NIA and the mega dam contractor for supposed violations of their tripartite Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), specifically on the extraction of aggregates in the ancestral land.
But as cleared by the JRMP II’s Project Management Office (PMO), the extractions were part and parcel of the project implementation and confined within the project site.
Cordero earlier noted that as early as 2019, consultations with the IP elders were conducted by NIA in relation to the intention of the contractor to use extracted materials from the project site.
Aside from these consultations with IP elders, meetings with and technical opinions from other agencies, including but not limited to PENRO-LGU Iloilo and Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), were sought by the office.
Cordero noted that these dialogues resulted in the proposal of NIA for royalty fee, which was submitted to the office of the NCIP and the Joint Monitoring Team, which was created to monitor MOA compliance of NIA, as early as Sept. 18, 2021./PN
