BAGUIO CITY – The Board of Directors of the Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) passed a resolution appealing to the Regional Development Council (RDC) in the Cordillera to demand from the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) and the Department of Energy (DOE) through the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) and the Office of the President’s Presidential Management Staff (PMS) to recognize, respect and protect the rights of the indigenous cultural communities and indigenous peoples (ICCs-IPs) in their issuances of water rights, service contracts and other types of permits involving the use and development of the natural resources within the ancestral domains or ancestral lands of the people of the Cordillera.
BENECO Board Resolution No. 2018-116 stated that electric cooperatives (ECs) like BENECO can more effectively undertake their mandated function of providing reliable and affordable power to all the member-owner-consumers not only in Benguet and |Baguio City, but in all component units of the Cordillera pursuant to the constitutional goal of the national economy of a more equitable distribution of opportunities, income and wealth if the counter productive and indiscriminate NWRB and DOE issuances of water rights, service contracts, and other permits to large profit-oriented business corporations were stopped through the intervention of the RDC-CAR.
BENECO was created by law to undertake the government’s rural electrification program in Benguet and like all the other ECs in the country, are mandated to provide affordable electric power needed for rural industrialization and countryside development and has the legal personality to represent its IPs in negotiating for the implementation of government policies that enhance its effectivity in providing reliable and affordable power to all the communities within its franchise area.
Section 22, Article 2 of the Constitution stated that the State recognizes and promotes the rights of ICCs and IPs within the framework of utility and development.
The government identified its ICCs and IPs of the country as a distinct category among the marginalized and poorest of the poor members of the society that need to be given the opportunity to rise above their marginalized and improved risk conditions by recognizing, respecting and protecting their rights to their ancestral lands or domains, including their right to manage the development and use of their natural resources to ensure their economic, social and cultural wellbeing, using their ancestral domain sustainable development and protection plans as required by law.
The resolution pointed out that the NCIP which is under the OP was created by Republic Act (RA) 8371 with the mandate to protect and promote the interest and wellbeing of the ICCs and IPs with due regard to their belief, customs, traditions and institutions among others.
The resolution stipulated that government agencies like the NWRB has issued and continuous to issue water rights over bodies of water like rivers, and the DOE issued and continuous to issue service contracts and other types of permits for the construction and development of hydro resources, which are within the ancestral domains or ancestral lands of the ICCs and IPs in Benguet and other provinces in the Cordillera in complete disregard, and in violation of the ICC-IP rights recognized by the Constitution and provided for in RA 8371.
According to the resolution, these indiscriminate and unlawful issuances by the NWRB, DOE, and other government agencies, of water rights, service contracts, and other types of permits to the large business corporations or rich business firms, which give them exclusive right to the use and development of the said natural resources, together with the profits and financial benefits derived therefrom, deprives the ICCs and IPs the exercise of their vested rights to manage the use and development of the resources in their domains, and to just and equitable share from the benefits of the development of said resources that would have alleviated their poverty conditions as envisioned by the framers of the 1987 Philippine Constitution and provided for in RA 8371.
“These indiscriminate issuances also deprive the ICCs and IPs of the exercise of their right and the opportunity to manage the use and development of these resources within their ancestral lands and domains, to ensure their economic, social, and cultural well-being thereby contributing to the national goals of unity and development as envisioned by the administration’s declared principle of inclusive development even by simply rising above their current marginalized and impoverished conditions,” the resolution stated.
By HENT
