IN ONE seating while browsing on some current news, these caught my attention. The start of the gigantic plan to build an international sports center in UP Mindanao. Anything about UP is interesting for me. We will not be a happy and progressive family migrants of Davao if not for UP Mindanao.
Early 1995's, my only son, Architect Francis, was assigned by UP Diliman to relocate to UP Mindanao to head the newly created College of Architecture. That time, there was a series of construction projects inside the campus. One of these was the building of the Human Kinetics Department to be supervised by Francis. The complex was donated by Sen. Robert Jaworski, so the hall was named after him. The building housed the required facilities of the college. I remember, during the inauguration, my grandaughter, Noe, brought home an authographed brand new basketball ball given by the senator. The family of Francis was housed in the nearby faculty housing facilities at PCA grounds. This place is a little more than an hour ride to the Davao City proper. When I joined their family in year 2000, we transferred to Juna Subdivision closer downtown.
Those were the days when Francis would ride in his bike complete with his biking gear, going to school. One day, our family rode in our car to attend a school affair. We passed by a long stretch of unpaved street lined with large luxuriant trees on both sides of the road. The long extended branches arched across the street forming a canopy to give shade and coolness for us, travelers. I found this very quaint country scenery very novel and interesting for me, a city dweller. I also imagined Francis biking through this rough road, days on end. Now you see why UP Mindanao is special to me.
UP Mindanao is constructing a sports center meeting the requirements of the International standards criteria. It will be built on a 20-hectare lot within the campus. The work will start this year. The UP System will shoulder one half of the construction expenses and the City Government of Davao is paying the other half. This is about 100 million from the UP System and more or less, 100 million from the government. The DPWH will supervise the construction of all facilities for different sports needs. They will also supervise the construction of all the roads surrounding the complex. Now we see the problems attendant to all these massive plans. There are many native settlers in the Bago Oshiro and the Mintal areas. They have their homes and fields where they have planted their crops. All of these have to be relocated and this is a tall order. This was tried many times before but all failed. The planners now are exhausting all the mitigating plans without depriving these natives of their rights to proper relocating areas provided by the local government catering to the settlers basic needs, simple housing, livelihood opportunities, education for the children, city services for electricity, water supply. They can imitate the system practiced by Jess Robredo in Naga when he was an LGU official. It was very successful and became the battlecry of the KAYA NATIN MOVEMENT for ethical and rightful governance.
The next issue is about a religious sect claiming a land area for the facilities of their group. The gross headline which struck me was this - Quiboloy is a land grabber. The man is the BFF of the Mayor. I know that the extensive land in Prayer Mountain area is the sect's Eden on earth. There had been passed issues of land usurpation of this sect filed by the native settlers. I wonder what happened to the resolutions of these problems.
Mayor Duterte noticed that the fire trucks supposed to check the spread of fires in the crowded communities in the city these last days, month of fire prevention, ironically cannot penetrate the narrow streets leading to the burning area. Now, the mayor is planning the widening of roads leading to crowded housing areas. Of course here we see again resistance to the project because families to be affected by the project will lose their homes and have to be relocated somewhere, which may be far from their work, school, and markets. These problems must be solved. The procedure is described above.
Another issue was in connection with the IP's representation in the city council. The Mayor finally swore in Bai Halile Sudagar as the official councilor of the Kagan tribe until 2017. The plan is to appoint representatives from each of the IP tribes one at a time.
I had repeatedly written on the plights of our IP's. They are Filipinos just like all of us and are entitled to all the rights which we enjoy. We should reach out to them in the spirit of brotherhood. All of these issues need immediate attention, to successfully achieve progress we should see to it that no Filipino will be shortchanged in the process. There should be justice at all times in any situation.
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