Sunday, May 11, 2008 Memoirs of an Ibaloi relocatee to Palawan By Jane Cadalig
SOMETIME in September 1979, some 80 families from Bokod and Itogon gathered at the Benguet provincial capitol.
They were to be ferried to Palawan -- the place that the government identified as relocation site for families displaced by the construction of the Binga and Ambuklao Dams.
Narcisa Sarape, her husband, and a kid waited for the instructions of their supposed "leaders" and at around 9 a.m., they started their journey to Poro Point in San Fernando, La Union.
At Poro Point, they met several other families from other regions like the Ilocos, who, like them, are also displaced.
Sarape, then six months pregnant with her second child, could not recall what caused these families' displacement. Or she just did not bother to ask for her mind was probably preoccupied on what awaits them in their destination.
From Poro Point, they were asked to aboard a government cargo ship, which transported them to Palawan.
"It was cargo ship 908," Sarape clearly recalled. "We numbered to about 108 families in that ship, including the 80 families from Benguet. We were told we are going to a place called Princess Urduja in Narra, Palawan."
The journey took seven days, Sarape said. When they reached Princess Urduja, the Benguet groups were settled in bunkhouses. They were told their houses were still not completed.
Sarape said they relocated to their final settlements after one year. The houses were worth P14,000. They were also given a carabao amounting to P18,000, which they will use to till the lands given to them.
The animal was later sold to buy farm implements and fertilizers.
"We agreed to be relocated to Palawan, hoping that life there was better. It was not," Sarape said, adding that the lands were not fertile.
One has to buy huge amounts of fertilizers to make it productive, which Sarape said was impossible for them, who left Benguet without a penny in their pockets. There was not even any financial assistance from government.
She said officials from Benguet have visited them to give medicines and P2,000 to each family.
Once a month though, each family were given supplies -- a kilo of meat, dried fish, some canned goods, mongo seeds and rice, which was allocated depending on the size of the family.
She was uncertain if the supplies came from the National Power Corporation. All she knew was that the goods were handed by personnel from the then Ministry of Agrarian Reform of Palawan. "We were made to sign a passbook every time we got the commodities," she said.
These monthly supplies, Sarape said, were not enough to sustain them, with the unproductive land they had. Her family was given 7.7 hectares titled under their name.
"Backyard gardening made us survive," Sarape said. Her family left Palawan in January 1983, after four years of struggle in a place they could not call their home.
Sarape, now 53, is tilling a land, not submerged by the Binga Dam at Binongaan Tinongdan, Itogon.
New Hope
Sarape's accounts gave hope to the Provincial Board, who is currently locating the displaced Benguet families in Palawan.
The board is finding the whereabouts of the families relocated to Palawan, but it is faced with the difficulty of not knowing the exact location of the displaced families.
As per account of a contact person in Palawan, Ibalois from Bokod and Itogon could not be found among the organization of Igorots in the province.
Board Member Bernard Waclin said Sarape will be a great help in locating the "missing tribe" in Palawan.
Waclin and Sarape met at Tinongdan recently when the NPC, SN Aboitiz Power (SNAP) and the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. conducted an ocular visit to the areas, which will be turned-over to SNAP.
Waclin said provincial officials are scheduled to go to Palawan on May 26.
Officials said they will hold a cañao if they find their missing constituents.
The move to find the displaced Ibaloi families came out anew as ancestral land claimants from Itogon renewed their calls for NPC to replace their lands submerged by the construction of the Ambuklao and Binga dams.
Morr Pungayan and July Lampitao, heirs of Pedro Lampitao, who owned vast tracks of land in Itogon before these were submerged by the Binga dam, are claiming back the areas, which are not used for the dam's operations.
The heirs want the return of their ancestral lands at Marian Village in Tinongdan, which also include the burial site of their forebears, lands not submerged at sitio Andukutan, and a water supply at Camodinga.
These lands, the claimants said, can still be tilled and the surviving fruit trees will serve as additional sources of income.
Apart from the Lampitao heirs, three other claimants are urging the NPC to give back their ancestral lands -- the Wakat, Pilo and Fianza clans. The last two have filed cases of repossession in court.
Pungayan said they do not intend to go to court but are asking for an amicable settlement of their claims.
Claims for just compensation are also being considered for negotiation before SNAP takes over the operations and maintenance of Binga and Ambuklao Dams.
SNAP won the public auction for the privatization of Binga and Ambuklao with a bid of 325 million US dollars.
