So Kapatagan, Digos Barangay Captain Juanito Morales is now in custody of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) after he was proven to have been selling, or perhaps facilitating the sales of inalienable lands within the ancestral domain to interested buyers?
We believe Captain Morales should not only be the one to be staked out by the NBI. We knew from as far back as 20 years that there are other barangay executives in areas like Marilog and Paquibato who are either engaging in marketing ancestral domain properties or facilitating such transactions as acquisition of rights by bridging the interested buyers with the appropriate officials at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources or DENR.
With the current trend of urban people doing whatever it takes to escape the heat and the hustle and bustle of living in the city proper, all the more that many are enticed to by land – big or small – in the uplands where the climate is still ideal for health and the surroundings allow anyone to be idle without thinking of any risk to life and limbs.
Do we have to wonder why the uplands of Kapatagan, Marilog, Toril district and even the still feared Paquibato fastness are now hosts to luxurious vacation houses, highway side coffee shops, resorts and the likes.
We are certain it will not take long to feel the dwindling of vegetables in the downtown markets. Today developers of high-end vacation villages are already salivating on certain areas for their future expansion. Hence, what used to be large vegetable farms would, in the very near future, suddenly be hosts to classy communities for the elite from the city proper.
Look at Eden, Bayabas, and other uplands in Marilog area. Who are the top property developers competing to introduce their brand in the areas? A number of the properties they have previously or recently acquired could have been part of the ancestral domain but for influence and connection these were titled in their name or that of their corporation.
Remember an item we took up in this space not too long ago? Yes, certain Davao City officials, and an elective national government man were able to acquire large tracks of inalienable properties located somewhere going to Cotabato Province. We learned that later, the properties were titled under their names.
Indeed it pays to become a top government official or an influential private citizen. And it pays very well.
And going back to the arrest of Kapitan Morales, we believe that the NBI need not be looking any farther. Easily they can have others of the Kapatagan barangay executive right here in the highland barangays of Davao City. And who knows they’d even be able to find some in the very office that is mandated to be the guardian of such national treasures as the country’s ancestral domains.
And they should also not lose sight of the possibility that even some acknowledged leaders of the indigenous peoples or lumads are actively in cahoots with the scheming ancestral domain merchants.
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In the many years that we were able to visit rural barangays in Davao City as part of our responsibility as Community Relations man of our former employer Davao Light and Power Co., we were able to personally see and walked through the many roads that were a little better than trail – rough and rugged during dry days, and wet and muddy every after heavy downpour. And residents of these rural barangays have to suffer every inch of the way when traversing these roads going to the lowlands, or to where they could sell their farm produce and buy their needed commodities for their household requirements enough for a particular duration.
We had clearly noted that other than being bulldozed during the initial opening of these roads, hardly had there been any efforts to pave or widen the trails for the longest time. In other words most rural roads, or call these as barangay roads, are so wanting in getting paved even with just sand and gravel, mountain mix, or at the most asphalt.
But no, the government cannot scrimp any more money for such projects. So, the unlucky residents of the said barangays must just have to learn to live with the situation.
What is intriguing us however, is the apparent doubling of expenses for road pavement in the city’s major highways and in further upgrading road surfaces even if the roads are in concrete and the surface is still far from destruction.
We are certain many of our readers have seen a number of concreted city roads and highways and are now being over-laid with thick asphalt. One example is the Catalunan Grande Road. Even at the height of the pandemic we were a frequent user of the same thoroughfare. We are witness to the road’s apparent well-paved surface easily creating in any passer-by’s mind that the condition on its surface indicate the high level of quality in the work. Then there is also the C.P. Garcia Diversion highway which is also given an asphalt lay over.
Indeed it is not easy to understand the logic behind this kind of road improvement project, Would it not have been much better if the budgets for the asphalt over-laying had been used in paving or improving the surface of badly dilapidated interior upland barangay roads?
Again we have yet to understand the logic behind these road surface upgrading projects – engineering or whatever.
