THE National Commission for Indigenous People (NCIP)-Davao Region recently purchased a drone to intensify the monitoring of the existing ancestral domains in the region and to hasten its survey tasks.
Earlier this year, NCIP-Davao regional director lawyer Geroncio Aguio said the commission planned to purchase a drone as a way for its survey team to operate easily compared to manual assessment but they initially lacked funds.
NCIP-Davao Region was able to obtain the drone on Wednesday, September 20, after finding enough appropriation from its annual budget.
"Even if we only have one drone for the whole region, this is really a big help as we cannot monitor regularly the ancestral domains if we do it by land as most of these are located in very distant places," he said.
The use of the drone, Aguio said, will be upon the request of the local government units of different provinces and municipalities within the region.
He said Davao Region has 12 ancestral domain lands based on NCIP's recent survey last August. Most of these ancestral lands are situated in Davao Oriental, Davao del Sur, and Compostela Valley.
"We are trying our best to bring back these lands to our Indigenous Peoples by ensuring them the land ownership title after our ancestral domain land survey," he said.
At present, the assessment and survey on the existing ancestral lands for IPs is already 85 percent complete and is targeted to finish before the end of the year.
Depending on the results of the survey, he said the processing of the land titles or other needed actions for the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) application of the IPs shall follow.