BATUAN, Bohol – Hundreds of townsfolk of this hinterland town demand for amendment of the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System (E-NIPAS) Act or Republic Act 11038 during the prayer-rally held at the public plaza in front of their municipal hall on Wednesday.
Vice-Mayor Zeniza Bulalaque, who is acting as mayor, said in interview that she’s calling President Bongbong Marcos, Jr. to hear their plea and the Congress to tinker the said law that deprived their livelihood and properties.
The vice-mayor is now acting as municipal mayor after Mayor Atty. Antonino Jumawid was preventively suspended in May 27 for six months without pay as a result of the fiasco generated by Captain’s Peak Resort in Sagbayan town.
The prayer-rally was triggered after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has run after some 273 establishments and private properties by requiring them to secure the Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) pursuant to the said law.
But the DENR did not implement the said requirement (ECC) after the said law was approved in 2018. The establishments, the public market, the Catholic church and private residences were already there when the law was not yet passed in said year, Jumawid said. The said law makes the residents criminal of their own properties, he added.
There’s a need to amend the said law since it placed the entire town’s territory, including the 15 barangays, under the protected area which is “unfair,” Bulalaque said. She added that they are amenable to regulate the protected areas as they have been protecting them, but only those considered chocolate hills and the flatlands allowed for development like agriculture, so as not to deprive the people of their livelihood.
The candle-lit prayer-rally ended peacefully. It was also participated by religious sectors, like Catholic, United Church of Christ of the Philippines, Iglesia Ni Cristo and others represented by their pastors.
It can be recalled that 69 Bohol officials were slapped with preventive suspension by the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with the Captain’s Peak Resort’s fiasco.
Meanwhile, Congresswomen Vanessa C. Aumentado and Alexie B. Tutor presented their proposed amendments to the E-NIPAS law during the meeting of the Protected Areas Management Board (PAMB) presided over by DENR 7 assistant director Charlie Fabre earlier of the day.
Bohol’s three solons, Reps. Edgar Chatto, Aumentado and Tutor, along with Palawan Rep. Jose Alvarez, as main authors, file House Bill No. 10438, An Act Establishing the Coverage of Chocolate Hills Natural Monument Amending the Composition of Protected Areas Management Board for Chocolate Hills Natural Monument, Appropriating Funds Therefore and for Other Purposes. (Ric Obedencio)
