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[av_heading heading=’Tapaz’s displaced IPs will get help from LGU – mayor ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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ILOILO City – The local government unit of Tapaz, Capiz confirmed it will extend support to residents of Sitio Laugan, Barangay Aglinab displaced by huge cracks on the ground.
Mayor Roberto “Nonong” Palomar clarified to Panay News the affected residents will receive financial assistance but the amount will depend on the scale of help that each affected family needs.
“Kung anong maitutulong ng local (government unit) we will for as long as saan kami aabot,” said Palomar.
Over 60 families – mostly indigenous peoples (IPs) – left the sitio due to the ground cracks that were as wide as 8 feet and a depth of 4 feet.
The cracks stretched to some 100 feet.
Some houses’ floors cracked, too.
Aside from financial assistance, Palomar said the town will also provide a relocation site for the affected families.
The local government of Tapaz ordered the evacuation of the families upon the recommendation of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) and the provincial and municipal disaster risk reduction and management offices.
The families who had nowhere else to go temporarily built makeshift houses in the boundary of the barangay proper and Sitio Lauagan.
According to Palomar, the proposed relocation site will not be far from the livelihoods of the affected families.
“We are mulling about 2 to 2.5 hectares,” he said.
According to Teresita “Nay Angging” Gayas, an IP leader in Sitio Laugan, the ground cracks started appearing last month.
In September, villagers felt two pronounced ground tremors, Gayas revealed. She also recalled heavy rains battering the area beginning Oct. 16.
Two months before the cracks appeared, a 5.4-magnitude earthquake struck Panay Island. The Aug. 15 tremor’s epicenter was in Valderrama town in adjacent Antique province. The tremor was generated by the active West Panay fault line.
Sitio Laugan, an ancestral domain of the IPs, is estimated to be just 15 kilometers from the active known fault.
Gayas, however, believed drilling activities near their village may have contributed, too, to the ground movement.
The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) plans to build a dam at Pan-ay River, specifically in Sitio Garo, Barangay Acuña which is several kilometers away from Sitio Laugan.
The drillings were part of the feasibility study of NIA for the dam.
“Malayo pa ‘yan. These are all haka-haka, in short. When we decide, that is it,” Palomar said./PN
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