DPWH hands 1st notice to demolish Bugnay markers

A FIRST notice was recently issued by the Upper Kalinga District Engineering Office (UKDEO) to the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) to demolish the illegally built markers at the Kalinga national road.

Engineer Teodoro Owek, UKDEO assistant district engineer said two more notices will be sent to the CPA until the end of October for the organization to take down the structures, now known as the hero’s markers in tribute to Macliing Dulag, Pedro Dungoc, and Lumbaya Gayudan’s fight for the Chico river movement.

As standard procedure by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), three notices are needed before the agency’s legal division takes further action.

Owek said the DPWH has long wanted to send notices to the owner of the structure but had no information to whom or to which organization to send the official letter.

It was only after the guidance from the Provincial Advisory Council the UKDEO was able to learn who built the structure.

Owek said the CPA must have known the structures were illegal when they were building.

“Hindi ba nila alam na illegal yun?” said Owek, reiterating the structures encroach the road right of way and did not have clearance from the agency when construction started in 2017.

Owek added there are other structures along the 40-kilometer span of the Upper Kalinga road which have been given notices like the CPA and are likewise awaiting action from the DPWH legal department.

DefendCordilleraPH started an earlier petition to the UKDEO– DPWH district engineer Eugene Batalao; Khadaffy Tanggol, regional director of the DPWH; General R’win Pagkalinawan, regional director of the Police Regional Office–Cordillera (PRO–COR), and Andres Ngao-i, chairman of the Kalinga Police Provincial Advisory Council.

The online petition, which has culled thousands of signatures, appealed to prevent the demolition of the monument of Macli-ing Dulag, Pedro Dungoc, Lumbaya Gayudan, and other heroes of the historic Anti-Chico Dam Resistance.

The demolition of the monument is tyranny especially at this time of Covid-19 pandemic. These heroes deserve the utmost respect for the people and the government.

Their monument deserves to be in a place of honor within their ancestral domain. Demolishing the monument is double injustice to the Anti-Chico Dams heroes. Macli-ing Dulag was shot dead by members of the Philippine Army led by Lieutenant Leodegardo Adalem on April 24, 1980.

Until now, justice has not been served. Now his monument along with other heroes and martyrs is also bound to be destroyed,” the petition said.

DefendCordilleraPH added to demolish and desecrate the monument is a brazen act of obliterating the Cordillera people’s history of struggle against oppression and injustice adding it is part of the government’s acts of historical revisionism or distorting and erasing the true history of the people’s resistance and heroism which remain relevant until today.

“It has been more than three years since the monument was built but it is only now that UKDEO and the police are raising the issue of encroachment and using this as an excuse to dismantle the monument.

The DPWH should have stopped the construction from the start if indeed there was a violation. The people of Bugnay including Dulag’s family had welcomed the project and even helped build the monument on their ancestral land,” the petition added.

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