BAGUIO CITY – Incumbent and former municipal officials of several towns in Benguet are now raising an uproar over attempts to allegedly railroad the passage of bills in the Senate creating the Baguio-La Trinidad-Itogon-Sablan-Tuba-Tublay Development Authority (BLISTTDA) without the consent of indigenous peoples and indigenous cultural communities who own the domains in their places.
Tuba Mayor Ignacio Rivera and La Trinidad Mayor Romeo Salda expressed their all-out support to the proposal of former La Trinidad Mayor Edna C. Tabanda to first conduct sincere and transparent consultations with the IPs-ICCs who own the ancestral domains in their municipalities to get their inputs on how their municipalities will benefit from the c4reation of the said body.
Further, the two town chiefs also supported Tabanda’s proposal for concerned government agencies to comprehensive master development plan of the whole BLISTT and the short, medium and long-term plans on how each of the municipalities will benefit from the creation of the body taking into consideration the individual needs and problems of the towns.
“We still believe that the proposal to create BLISTTDA is intended to actually decongest the obviously over development in Baguio city that is why we first need to consult our people on whether or not they are in favour of our localities serving as expansion for the problems that Baguio city is currently experiencing using the spread of development to cloth the said clear intention of the pending legislative measures,” Tabanda stressed.
The former La Trinidad official narrated that the concept of the creation of BLISTT started way back in the early 1990s when after the July 16, 1990 killer earthquake the struck most parts of Northern Luzon, including Baguio city and its neighboring towns in Benguet, the World Bank (WB) funded the European Union (EU) to study the overall situation of Baguio City and its nearby towns in Benguet wherein there was a proposal to create a Metro Baguio set up similar to the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA).
However, Tabanda, who was then the town executive of La Trinidad, and her colleagues in Itogon, Tuba and Sablan opposed the said proposal because it was obviously intended to benefit Baguio City by decongesting the highly urbanized city and allowing La Trinidad, Itogon, Sablan and Tuba towns to suffer the consequences of development just to address the city’s woes.
While there were attempts to insert suggested recommendations on how to enhance the proposal, Tabanda claimed by the looks of the new version of the proposed legislative measure it will still be Baguio city that stands to benefit from the proposed set up of the local governments which is simply adding a layer of bureaucracy which people actually do not want from the start.
“The proposed creation of the BLISTDA is not actually a new concept as what is being espoused by certain quarters. We should remember that the BLIST concept started way back in the early 1990s but it never materialized because of our vehement opposition as we will be the shock absorbers of the problems of the city which should not be the case,” Tabanda stated.
The former Benguet vice governor even shared that there already exists the BLISTT Governing Council and BLISTT Development Council which simply needs to be strengthened without even passing through legislation for as long as the funds and programs will be put in place coupled with the hiring of highly trained personnel who will administer the aid councils through the direct supervisions of the local chief executives that compose the councils.
She argued that the passage of the BLISTTDA would mean that the concerned government agencies are reportedly undermining the capacity of local officials to lead the existing councils and the ability of technical personnel of the local governments to plan for what will be the best for the whole BLISTT community.
According to her, it is still best for the proponents of the measure not to rush its approval in Congress because there are still numerous inter-related issues that must first be addressed by the concerned government agencies and the need to consult the affected IPs and ICCs who stand to benefit from the proposed law once enacted by both chambers of Congress.
Mayor Rivera claimed that he wants to first see the comprehensive master development of the BLISTT and the attached short, medium and long-term development plans before coming out with a conclusion whether or not to support the immediate passage of the measure into law.
Moreover, Salda and Rivera asserted that consultations must be done on the ground so that proponents and lawmakers will understand the peculiarity of the Cordillera compared to other lowland communities in the country.
Tabanda emphasized that it is not fair to compare the BLISTT areas to that of Subic because the two areas are not in the same situation in terms of the state of lands and the same cannot be compared to major cities in China because the said areas have available huge tracks of land for development apart from the fact that the said cities are under a communist government which has full control of the activities of the people.
By HENT
