Recto cites Marawi’s contributions to guide budget for reconstruction

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph G. Recto on Monday asked officials in the executive branch tasked to work on the reconstruction of battle-scarred Marawi City to submit a budget before the Senate and the House of Representatives to wrap up work on the proposed 2018

13.7-trillion national budget by the first week of December.

The amount proposed for the reconstruction of Marawi in the 2018 national budget is P10 billion.

“The question is: Is this enough? How much of the 125.5 billion Calamity Fund for 2017 is used for Marawi? They should now run the numbers, so we will know if the 110 billion is enough,” he said.

Recto stressed that instead of a supplemental budget, the funds needed to rebuild the city could be included in the 2018 national budget.

‘Knowledge and power’ To highlight the significance of Marawi, Recto pointed out that the city has given Mindanao “knowledge and power” worth hundreds of billions of pesos, referring to education from the Mindanao State University and to the power supply from Lanao Lake.

Recto said he is providing this “important context” to government planners who are drafting the Bangon Marawi blueprint and computing the cost to implement it.

“Now the city which has given Mindanao light and enlightenment has been thrown into darkness. It needs help. So whatever amount will be spent to bring it up on its feet will just be fraction of what it had given to Mindanao,” Recto said.

Recto said those drafting the Bangon Marawi blueprint should take these into consideration.

Power supply

“Let us always keep in mind that Marawi is the capital of the province where Lanao Lake is, which is the source of about a third of Mindanao’s power supply,” Recto said.

It is also where the main campus of the Mindanao State University is located, Recto added, referring to the “UP (University of the Philippines) of the South” which has produced thousands of graduates since its founding in 1961.

“Marawi is both a source of light and enlightenment. Thus any aid package should be viewed within that context. To a large extent, the aid we will be giving is some sort of a payback,” Recto said.

Recto said Agus River, which flows through Marawi, “is the gateway through which waters that run hydropower plants downstream pass,” Recto said.

Six hydroelectric plants cascade from the mouth of the lake in the city. The plants have a combined installed capacity of 728 megawatts of clean and cheap energy.

For 70 years, the people of Lanao Del Sur have been good stewards of the watershed which feeds the lake which in turn provides the water for the hydroelectric plants that supply the whole of the island of electricity,” Recto said.

56-year-old university Another major contribution of Marawi not only to Mindanao but to the entire country “is that great university on the hill, the Mindanao State University, which was founded 56 years ago,” he said.

“For over half a century, Mindanao’s best and the brightest have gone to that school, lured by free tuition and topnotch teaching. It was the first school of choice for many of Mindanao’s high school honor students,” Recto added.

In the years that followed, eight of the 11 satellite campuses of MSU, such as the MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology and the MSU General Santos, have become autonomous units under what has become the MSU System.

What can’t be denied is that MSU in Marawi helped build the human capital of Mindanao,” Recto said. “It has been said that each town and city in Mindanao, and there are 455 of them, hosts at least 100 MSU alumni or former students.”

“Kahit na nga si Bato galing MSU bago siya pumunta sa PMA,” Recto said, referring to PNP Director General Ronald de la Rosa who was an MSU student for three years before he went to the Philippine Military Academy.

So it can be said that Marawi lighted homes in Mindanao and lighted the torch of knowledge, Recto said. Lots in military reservation Meanwhile, former Vice President Jejomar Binay has asked the Duterte government to include in its rehabilitation program the distribution of lots inside a military reservation in Marawi City to their present occupants.

Binay, in a letter to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, cited a petition from several residents who have been living within a military reservation. He received the letter when he was Chair of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC). Binay served as HUDCC chair from 2010 to 2015.

“These residents had requested the agency’s help in transferring to them ownership of the lots they occupied. Sadly, the change in administration precluded any further action on their request,” Binay wrote.

The former HUDCC chair urged Lorenzana, as defense secretary and as martial law administrator, to consider his proposal in the government’s rehabilitation plans for Marawi.

Binay also said it would be in the best interest of the nation for the government to release the lands in favor of the actual occupants.

“The protracted battle in Marawi has left its people with almost nothing else to hold on to but their faith and their hope that their city will soon rise from the rubble. I believe that the present national leadership can keep hope alive in their hearts through undertaking a just and peaceful resolution that will finally put the territorial dispute to rest,” he added.

1953 Presidential Decree

Recently, news of a rediscovered 1953 presidential decree giving military rights over some 6,000 hectares of land in Lanao del Sur, including the bulk of Marawi City, has caused anxiety among the already beleaguered residents.

A number of local government leaders and representatives of Lanao del Sur have spoken up to warn concerned officials against causing further agitation among the Maranao people, giving emphasis on historical evidence as basis for the latter’s claim over the territory as their ancestral lands.

However, officials of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) gave assurance that “the military will not claim any land that it does not need.” (With a report from Anna Liza Villas Alavaren)