Profit greed victimizes IPs

Rogue Gallery’s favorite conglomerate is again stuck in a controversy regarding the takeover of ancestral lands that it wanted to convert into a leisure resort.

Recently, the corporate giant was tagged in breached contracts in the energy sector that resulted in higher electricity rates, which power users have to pay for through higher monthly bills.

It claimed “legal ownership” of over 7,000 hectares of land on Bugsuk Island, except for Sitio Mariahangin, a separate island in Balabac, Palawan, which it is also trying to obtain. The real estate, however, sits where the Molbog indigenous peoples are residing.

The tribal communities were visited by Department of Agrarian Reform staff who informed them last 27 June of an impending demolition of their homes to make way for a large-scale eco-luxury tourism project spanning more than 5,500 hectares known as the “Bugsuk Island Resort.”

Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) identified the eco-tourism project in Bugsuk as part of the corporation’s principal properties in 2023.

In 2023, a “resettlement program” was presented for Mariahangin families, who were offered P75,000 each along with a parcel of land or P100,000 without land. Recently, the offer has allegedly increased to P400,000 per family to urge them to vacate their ancestral land.

The inroad of the conglomerate caused division in the IP community, even within direct families. “Some of our kin were even recruited to work for the company. They feel like they can pay all of us in Mariahangin, which is why they are being denied entry to our community,” one of the IP leaders said.

The firm claimed it acquired the lands through the purchase of companies that have “held titles since their original issuance in 1974 as part of a government program revolving around the redistribution of agricultural lands to farmers.”

In 2023, the Department of Agrarian Reform revoked the Notice of Coverage (NOC) of the 10,821 hectares of indigenous peoples’ land in Bugsuk, Palawan, which they initially issued in 2014. Residents said that after then-Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III issued the decision, harassment and intimidation in their community in Sitio Mariahangin escalated.

Seaweed farming is the residents’ main source of livelihood, followed by the cultivation of crops (e.g., corn). It is specifically stated in the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988 that all public and private agricultural lands are part of the distribution coverage.