ILOILO CITY – Royalty fees will be paid to the Panay-Bukidnon Indigenous Peoples (IPs) for the sand and gravel obtained from their ancestral land for the ongoing construction of a P13-billion mega dam project in Calinog, Iloilo.
The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) announced that the Panay-Bukidnon IPs will be given five percent of the base cost of raw materials used for the Jalaur River Multi-Purpose Project-Stage II (JRMP-II).
JRMP-II project manager Jonnel Borres and JRMP-II legal counsel Michael Margarico met the council of elders of Panay-Bukidnon earlier this week to discuss the payment of royalty fees.
Late last month, former Calinog Vice Mayor Renato Casinao, an IP himself, and Jimmy Lastrilla alleged that Korean firm Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd. was illegally quarrying in the ancestral domain.
Casinao and Lastrilla said that NIA, as the government agency implementing the pet project pushed by former Sen. Franklin Drilon, did not really act on their complaint.
The JRMP-II Project Management Office emphasized that Daewoo was not quarrying illegally.
“There is a need to excavate these areas to give way to the construction of the dams and other facilities. The extracted raw materials, having been found out to be of good quality, were processed by Daewoo and reused in the ongoing construction of the project,” the JRMP-II Project Management Office said in a statement.
The JRMP-II is constructing three dams and reservoirs. It aims to irrigate 31, 840 hectares of farmlands and improve rice production in Iloilo as well as build a hydropower plant and provide potable drinking water.