In Benguet’s Little Kibungan, landslide victims still homeless
IT WAS an uneventful day in October in the community of Little Kibungan in La Trinidad town, Benguet province, as mothers milled around, keeping a watchful eye on their children playing nearby.
A mother, who is in her 40s, pointed to a group of youngsters and told the INQUIRER: “Do you see the boy wearing a blue sweat shirt? He was still a baby when the tragedy happened. He is now 4 years old. Those kids are actually playing on the dirt that slid from the mountain.”
On Oct. 8, 2009, when Typhoon “Pepeng” struck the Cordillera, a portion of the mountain above Longlong Road in Barangay Puguis collapsed, burying the community of Little Kibungan. The massive landslide happened at night and claimed 77 lives.
The mother, who asked not to be named to avoid drawing the anger of local officials, said she and her neighbors had returned to Little Kibungan and were trying to live amid the threat of another landslide.
They have nowhere else to go, she said, and that they were banking on the government’s promise four years ago to relocate them following the tragedy.
“Of course, we are afraid [of suffering another tragedy], but we just entrust our safety to God. We have nowhere else to go,” she said.
They are aware that they are living in a landslide-prone area, she said. “We could not sleep every time it rains hard, especially during the recent typhoons.”
Little Kibungan has been their home for over 10 years now, making it hard for them to just leave. “We cannot afford to rent an apartment, much more to build a new house,” the mother said.
Broken promises
“It was all lip service. It has been four years and nothing happened [to the promised relocation]. I am about to give birth to my fourth child. I don’t think we will be relocated,” she said.
In 2010, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Proclamation No. 2098 declaring portions of the Benguet State University (BSU) reservation in Barangay Tawang as relocation site for residents displaced by Typhoons “Ondoy” and Pepeng in La Trinidad.
Records from the Municipal SocialWelfare Development Office (MSWDO) showed that the successive typhoons left 276 families in the town homeless. The agency said 186 families—155 of them from Barangay Puguis and Little Kibungan—were up for relocation.
Some landslide victims, however, were taken in by their relatives but many have rebuilt their houses in Puguis.
The mother said that in 2010, a few weeks before the election, representatives of the La Trinidad municipal government recruited residents to help in the construction of a road to the relocation site. “We were given food in exchange for our labor,” she said.
She said the residents were told that they would receive P70,000 in housing assistance from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). “We have not received any amount until now,” she said.
The DSWD required the aid recipients to secure a certification of ownership of at least 80 square meters of lot before the money was released, she said. “We followed it up but we were told we would get it in time,” she said.
Disregarding safety
Alfredo Genetiano, chief of the mine management division of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) in the Cordillera, lamented the residents’ disregard for their safety when they chose to return to Little Kibungan despite their warnings.
“We should learn from experience,” Genetiano said.
He said the MGB had warned the municipality of the danger in Little Kibungan even before the tragedy. “We even placed a signage indicating that the area is a landslide-prone area,” he said.
Benigno Cesar Espejo, the bureau’s supervising geologist, said his office had recommended that no houses or other structures should be built in the area.
“Our weather today is very unpredictable and our rainfall [volume] is very high, more than what the soil can absorb. The area is landslide-prone and we cannot change that. The retaining wall [built there] may help but it is not an assurance that the tragedy would not happen again,” Espejo said.
A concrete wall is being built on the mountainside that collapsed in 2009. The P32-million project is funded by Benguet Rep. Ronald Cosalan.
Relocation stalled
Feliciano de los Santos, director of BSU’s land reservation division, said the university immediately turned over 3.3 hectares in Barangay Tawang to the municipal government after Arroyo signed the proclamation.
But the relocation was stalled after the intended site for typhoon victims remained untouched after development work was stopped in 2011 due to ancestral land claims over the area.
Former La Trinidad Mayor Gregorio Abalos Jr. stopped the development after several families staked claims over the land.
The contested area is actually within the BSU reservation and the claimants only surfaced when it was already being developed as a relocation site, De los Santos said.
He said BSU earlier questioned the titles issued within the university reservation, including the Tawang property. The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), however, did not inform the university administration of land surveys it did within the reservation in preparation for the issuance of ancestral land titles.
“The area should be occupied by typhoon victims as it is intended for them. But if the land will be used for other purposes, the university will not agree to it,” De los Santos said.
But lawyer Severino Lumiqued, legal officer of the NCIP Benguet, said he was not aware of any ancestral land title issued by the commission in Tawang.
La Trinidad Mayor Edna Tabanda said the municipal government was back to square one as far as the relocation of 2009 typhoon victims was concerned.
“We will pursue the site development. We cannot blame the victims if they returned back to Puguis because they were not offered any other option,” she said.