DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 25 August) — Displaced families from Marawi City’s Ground Zero or the Main Affected Area (MAA) will be allowed to return to their villages during the second “kambisita” (visit) in September to establish ownership of the destroyed properties before government starts the debris clearing.
Housing Secretary Eduardo del Rosario, chair of the Task Force Bangon Marawi told a press briefing in Marawi City on Friday that said they would need to establish the metes and bounds of the individual lots even without the titles within the 24 barangays spread across a 250-hectare area.
“We have to establish ownership of the lots and the buildings. As of now, we do not know exactly who own the lots and who own the buildings,” he said.
Residents check what is left of their building after the five-month war. Photo taken on 8 May 2018. MindaNews photo by MANMAN DEJETO
Del Rosario said that a workshop to be headed by Environment assistant secretary Michelle Go will be conducted for all agencies involved in the land resource management to determine the properties and the estimated cost before proceeding with the debris clearing.
The new target date for groundbreaking rites to mark the start of the rehabilitation efforts in Marawi City’s Ground Zero is on September 19, as announced by del Rosario in a press briefing in Malacanang on August 17. In the Marawi press briefing on August 24, Del Rosario said the groundbreaking would be on the third or last week of September.
“We need to start it from the most affected area. We have to be very definite, to the nearest inch or meter as we establish it, otherwise we will have future problems,” he added.
Del Rosario said that during the “kambisita” which will begin on September 10, they will let individual owners sign the consent allowing the government to clear their properties. Destroyed buildings will not be touched unless they get consent from the owners, he said.
In the first “kambisita” in April and May, residents of Ground Zero were allowed to visit their homes and shops for three days each per cluster.
Col. Romeo Brawner Jr., deputy commander of the Joint Task Force Ranao, said the second “kambisita” would be called a “social cartography” because they will also gather data from the displaced residents to be undertaken by the Department of Social Welfare and Development whose representatives are part of the 18 teams that will do the survey.
“We will be conducting a training by the first week of September for all of the members of the team including the team members coming from the LGU. So malaking training po iyong gagawin natin prior to the actual entering of the residents together with these trained teams,” he added.
Philippine Information Agency (PIA) director General Harold Clavite said the DSWD continues the distribution of basic social protection services for displaced families in the remaining evacuation centers and home-based tents.
He added that the agency provides the ongoing distribution of hygiene kits, family kits and sleeping kits to about 6,832 home-based IDPs currently located in Lanao Del Norte.
He added the DSWD, the local goverment of Marawi, TFBM members, and the World Food Program continue to prepare for the biometric profiling of all IDPs from Marawi City.
Del Rosario said there are about 817 remaining families in evacuation centers while waiting for the completion of more temporary shelters that can accommodate around 1,500 families.
“We expect that all IDPs in all evacuation centers will be transferred to all temporary shelters by …. December. So by 2019, we would no longer see IDPs occupying evacuation centers,” he said. (Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews)
