Residents of former `CTG' bastions gets help from government
TIMRA Reports • 17:30 PM Sat Jul 15, 2023
1
By:
John M. Unson
An Army officer talks to victims of rebel abuses in Makilala, Cotabato about government livelihood support. (From 39th IB)
COTABATO CITY --- Life is back to normal for more than 400 villagers at the upland border of North Cotabato and Davao del Sur provinces that communist rebels had abused in years past.
The barangays where they reside, once bastions of the New Peoples’ Army now tagged by the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police merely as a “communist terrorist group,” had been declared “insurgency free” as a result of interventions by local government units, the provincial police in both provinces and the Army’s 39th Infantry Battalion.
In a statement dispatched Saturday to media outfits in central Mindanao, the 39th IB said representatives of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Region 12 released on Friday a P246,000 livelihood grant for 82 families in Barangay San Vicente in Makilala town in North Cotabato province that got displaced by CTG-Army clashes in recent years.
Another group, the Tapicong Datalcolon Farmers Association. also launched then, with the help of DSWD-11, its general merchandise business in Barangay Bacungan in Magsaysay, Davao del Sur.
The 39th IB and the provincial police offices in North Cotabato and Davao del Sur were cited by national officials who accompanied President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. during his visit to Digos City last month for having been instrumental in setting free from ruthless armed groups the highland barangays at the border of the two provinces.
A villager, Patricio Dumais, told reporters Saturday the forced collection from them of “revolutionary tax” by armed men made life for them so miserable.
“Now we can plant corn and other crops freely, our earnings safe from extortionists,” Dumais said.
Lt. Col. Ezra Balagtey, commander of the 39th IB, told reporters Saturday credit for the recovery of families in hinterlands in Magsaysay and Makilala has to go to the DSWD, the Department of Agriculture and local executives involved in community rehabilitation efforts after communist guerillas had left for good.
Records from the offices of the provincial governors in the two provinces indicate that more than 300 CTG members in the two provinces have surrendered in batches since 2018 through the intercession of local officials and units of the 39th IB.