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[av_heading heading=’The dynamo behind Caluya’s fast break’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
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Sunday, April 23, 2017
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ISTA, Antique – No athlete from the municipality of Caluya, Antique has qualified to participate in this year’s Palarong Pambansa that is opening today. But Mayor Genevive Lim Reyes and her staff are here to show their best performance at the opening ceremony through the Tatusan Tribe.
Tatusan Tribe, the cream of Caluya’s costumed merrymakers, bagged the championship in the Kasadyahan component of Dinagyang Festival in Iloilo City in 2016; and first-runner up this year.
Today’s Tatusan performers in the Palaro represent the winning tribe in the annual Tatusan Festival, Caluya’s own tourism event – slated on May 17 to 18 this year. Caluya celebrates the Tatusan Festival through a parade of colorful, crab-shaped floats, street-dancing and booth display showcasing various sizes of tatus, among other highlights of the festival.
“Tatusan” is derived from Caluya’s indigenous “tatus” – a unique blue-streaked crab that thrives mainly on coconut meat. It sells locally at P500 per kilo but may cost thrice as much when sold outside the island. This elusive burrowing creature can only be caught at night with the help of a flashlight and grilled coconut as bait. It can grow up to 40 centimeters and weigh up to four kilos.
Mayor Reyes thinks of Tatusan Festival as not just merry-making but as a generator of opportunities for prosperity of the people. There was a time when native farmers and fishermen could hardly survive on copra making, seaweed farming and fishing due to depressed prices. But when they got in contact with visitors from the “outside world” willing to pay higher prices for their harvest, their lives changed for the better.
Caluya is now the fifth largest seaweed producer in the country. Needing no fertilizer, it takes only about three to four weeks to harvest the seaweed. Compradors buy it at more or less P200 per kilo and send it to Cebu where it is processed into carrageenan, a gum that is used as stabilizer or thickener in jellies and dairy products, processed meat, toothpaste and pharmaceutical products.
A dot in the map in the northernmost tip of the province of Antique, Caluya has a population of 30,000 spread out in the cluster of eight islands. Apart from Caluya town and its barangays, it has seven more island barangays: Sibay, Sibato, Sibolo, Liwagao, Nagubat, Panagatan and Semirara.
An Information Technology graduate of the Central Philippine University, Mayor Reyes has steered Caluya from being a 4th class to 1st class municipality, a jump that is probably unprecedented. Caluya’s annual income hovers between of P350 million to half a billion. At least 72 percent is revenue from the privately-operated Semirara Mining and Power Corporation (SMPC). It is no doubt in recognition of her success that the Antique chapter of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) has elected her president.
The late DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo awarded Caluya with the Seal of Good Housekeeping in 2010, recognizing the municipal leadership’s excellence in local legislation, development planning, resource generation, resource allocation and utilization, customer service, and human resource development.
Probably because of her innate modesty, the lady mayor would rather credit her late father for her success in politics: “I am just following my father’s footsteps.”
“My father, Reynante Lim,” she once told us of the former mayor, “started all the improvements in Caluya. He started the move for ample electricity and water supply. Subong, bastante na sa tubig ang Caluya kag 24/7 na ang kuryente.”
However, Reyes does not discount the possibility that SMC might someday run out of coal. There has to be an alternative source of income, most likely from tourism. The townsfolk should have stable business or jobs. Women should not to be contented with being housewives; they should go out and earn a living, too.
In fact, many women of Caluya are now engaged in seaweed farming on the calm shoreline of the island. The women have also devised a way to turn seaweeds into edible snack chips./PN
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