KIBUNGAN, Benguet – Rep. Ronald M. Cosalan questioned the sincerity of the officials of the controversial CohecoBadeo Corporation in striking a deal with the indigenous peoples (IPs) of this municipality and neighboring towns of Benguet, La Union and Ilocos Sur and the company’s financial capacity to bankroll the implementation of the P30 billion 500-megawatt pump storage hydro project in barangay Badeo when their recent actions contradict what they had been promising the IPs.
While he admitted that CohecoBadeo Corporation officials led by its purported majority shareholder Larry Howon Kim met with him in Manila and committed that their 500-megawatt project will be implemented right after the completion of the 60-megawatt run-off-river hydro project of the Cordillera Hydroelectric Power Corporation (COHECO) in Kapangan, the lawmaker accused the CohecoBadeo Corporation officials of violating this promise because it is proceeding with the free and prior informed consent (FPIC) assemblies in the various barangays in the town from June 14-23, 2017.
Kim, who was the previous majority shareholder of COHECO when it was still securing the FPIC of IPs in Kibungan and Kapangan for its 60-megawatt project in barangay Cuba, reportedly sold his shares to a Filipino-owned power corporation to the tune of P1.2 billion based on the company’s own press statement last week.
“We do not want what happened to COHECO to be repeated by the very same person in Kibugan because this Korean national is actually enriching himself at the expense of the IPs who will be made to suffer for several decades the consequences of his ambitious pump storage projects while carting away billions of pesos without even having a single drop of sweat,” Cosalan stressed.
The three-term lawmaker urged Kibungan IPs not to be carried away by the sugar-coated words of the CohecoBadeo Corporation officials who will be conducting the FPIC activities in their places because they will be the ones to suffer the consequences of the environmentally critical project that will result in their eventual displacement if they will give their consent for the project, saying that he will personally monitor the conduct of the FPIC process and will speak before the people to reject the project for the sake of the present and future generations of IPs.
Cosalan accused CohecoBadeo Corporation of repeating what it had done to the original COHECO because it allowed the entry of a Chinese company to infuse some $500 million dollars as capitalization which is actually tantamount to selling the company to a Chinese firm as the infused capital is actually the cost of the put up of the pump storage project.
The China Engineering Group Guangxi Hydroelectric Construction Bureau Co. Ltd., one of China’s biggest integrated construction enterprises, reportedly signed an agreement with CoehecoBadeo Corporation to develop the 500-megawatt pump storage hydro power plant in barangay Badeo.
Cosalan explained the mere fact that CohecoBadeo Corporation entered into an agreement with a Chinese company even before the start of the project puts to question the capacity of the Korean-owned company to bankroll the project and his personality as the majority shareholder when he already again sold his company to the Chinese firm so and it should have been the Chinese company officials who should have met with him.
He said Mr. Kim is actually an enterprising businessman and not an investor as there is already a precedent of him selling his shares in COHECO to a Filipino-owned company and now again selling his shares to a purported Chinese investor thereby raking in billions of pesos in so-called developer’s fee simply by getting the consent of the IPs for the project and the permits issued to the company by the concerned government agencies and local governments, when in actually, he has not done any development.
Cosalan pointed out Kibungan IPs should not give their consent to the project because of expected serious negative impacts on the environment not only in the host but also in the neighboring communities, the massive displacement of IPs from their ancestral domain and their deprivation of their existing sources of livelihood.
According to him, what should be utmost consideration of the IP leaders in deciding whether to endorse or not the project is what will be their legacy to the present and future generations if their environment will be devastated and ravaged, if they will be booted out from their ancestral domain and their sources of livelihood will be submerged or taken away from them.
He assured Kibungan IP leaders that he will make himself available for the conduct of the FPIC process in the different barangays to guarantee that their true voice against the destructive project will be the one that will be reflected in the outcome of the FPIC.
By HENT
It was in the year 1990 that Kibungan folks heard about a technology that can harness rivers for electricity. A survey was started by Napocor but their inadequate information campaign drives only incurred local leaders’ apprehensions likening mini-hydro electric projects with that of the Ambuklao Dam Project that left sad experiences of dislocated people and submerged farmlands in neighboring municipality of Bokod in the 1960s. Meanwhile companies like Hedcor has been developing mini-hydro electric projects around Benguet, Mountain Province and Davao del Norte. Lately, BENECO has successfully developed one in Buguias, Benguet. As for the Muncipality of Kibungan, the emergence in year 2007 of a supposed consortium of Korean developers and investors called COHECO has been aggregating and dissaggregating themselves and selling their company’s rights from one businessman to another has, for the last ten years, only kept other well-meaning developers away. To the ordinary Kibungan native, all what COHECO did was obtain the Department of Energy’s approval and long, tedious and repeating FPIC work. It has been under five local administrations already spanning 27 years since Napocor’s survey but still with no completed mini-hydro electric project in sight despite Kibungan rivers’ comparable potentials for development. Would that officials, then and now, rather rose over the occasion and came up with a sound holistic development plan, zeroed-in on water resources development, toured dissident local tribal leaders around successfully operational project sites and then found investors and developers who could have accomplished timely, quality, economical and serviceable mini-hydro electric projects. After all politics is also called problem-solving no doubt was well-articulated during every election campaign time. The local politicians’ (executive and legislative) essential function, in the words of Manila Times columnist Ronquilio, is to “lead society into the trailblazing path with common good and prudent use of government resources as the main objective.”