Officers and members of the Socorro Bayanihan Services Incorporated (SBSI) led by Jey Rence Quilario, popularly known as Senior Agila, are now being evicted in the 353-hectare Siargao Island Protected Landscape and Seascape (SIPLAS) in Surigao del Norte.
This, after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has cancelled its agreement with the SBSI for violating the provisions of the tenurial instrument that was awarded in June 2004.
The presence of the SBSI members in the area is covered by the Protected Area Community-Based Resource Management Agreement (PACBRMA) No. 74007, with the agreement that the group would develop the site for agroforestry and to work for Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR) of the protected area.
But DENR Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo Loyzaga said that as early as 2019, the department’s investigation has monitored the presence of structures in the protected area which is not part of the agreement.
In September last year, Loyzaga issued a Letter of Suspension to SBSI on September 29, 2023 as the latter introduced improvements and structures in the area that are not under the Protected Area Management Plan and without the required endorsement from the Protected Area Management Board (PAMB).
Following the series of investigation in connection with the involvement of Senior Agila to alleged qualified trafficking in persons, facilitation of child marriage, solemnization of child marriage, and child abuse, the DENR decided to cancel the agreement.
Among the basis for the cancellation of the agreement were the establishment of checkpoints strictly regulating the entry of non-members of SBSI; and, failure to submit the required monthly, quarterly, or annual reports about the implementation of its Community-based Resource Management Plan (CRMP).
Also cited as basis for the cancellation were the establishment of infrastructure such as new access roads, communal quadrangle with a basketball court, volleyball court, and a stage with bleacher, wave pool, recording studio, radio station, gymnasium/dome, landscaping, and monuments, which the DENR said, are not included in the CRMP.
Currently, Loyzaga said they are not facilitating the reintegration and resettlement of affected occupants, adding that there are 404 households of tenured migrants in the said PACBRMA area that will be relocated.
Senior Agila and 12 other officers of the SBSI were already charged and were already issued with an arrest warrant for various criminal offenses.