FORMER REBELS IN CORDILLERA BENEFIT FROM GOVERNMENT INTEGRATION PROGRAM

March 30, 2025 Community Billboard

BAGUIO CITY

At least 342 former rebels in the Cordillera region are assisted by the national government to transform their lives through packages of
assistance under the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (ECLIP). Department of the Interior and Local Government
Cordillera Administrative Region (DILG-CAR) Director Araceli San Jose, reported in the Kapihan sa Bagong Pilipinas that the 342 former rebels (FRs) were provided with a total of around P25.64 million in assistance since 2016. The data include 101 FRs from 2022 to 2024 who received around P8.94 million worth of assistance.

The DILG, the lead agency of the ECLIP and Amnesty Program Cluster of the Regional Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (RTF-ELCAC), administers the provision of reintegration assistance worth P21,000, immediate assistance of P15,000, livelihood assistance of P50,000 and firearms remuneration, which is twice the valuation amount of the surrendered firearm, San Jose shared. The government also provides housing assistance to qualified FRs. From 2018 to 2022, there were four FRs who received a total of P585,000
worth of housing assistance, San Jose said.

A part of the DILG-administered package of assistance is the P5M funding for the establishment of halfway houses for FRs in provincial and highly urbanized cities that are ECLIP implementers. For CAR, there are six established ECLIP halfway houses, one each in Baguio
City and the provinces of Abra, Apayao, Ifugao, Kalinga, and Mountain Province. The RTF-ELCAC is also working for a regional federation of FRs for better access to programs and services of other national agencies. There are already some FRs in Cordillera provinces that formed an association for such a purpose, according to San Jose.

Ka “Balyer”, a former rebel, expressed gratitude to the government for the assistance that helped him start a new and better life with his family. He encouraged other rebels to return to the fold of the law and become productive members of society, as he shared the hard experiences he encountered as a rebel and how he missed his youthful life when he was recruited by a communist front group at a
young age. “Iti dadduma nga kakadwa nga adda pay laeng iti bantay, nu mabalin kuma ket awisen tayu isuda nga bumaba tapno agbaliw ti panagbiag da. Ta kaasi dagiyay kabataan nga nakitak idjay, imbes kuma nga naka-eskwela da piman, matay da iti sakit, matay da iti labanan, sayang dagiyay da nga kabataan”, he stressed.

(Let us convince those who are still in the mountains to come down and surrender so that they can pursue a better life, especially the sorry state of youth that I saw there, that instead of attending school, they can die of sickness, they can die in an armed encounter.) Joining San Jose in the kapihan were PMaj Dan Evert Sokoken of the Police Regional Office-CAR, National Intelligence Coordinating Agency Regional Director Camilo Balitaan, Assistant Provincial Prosecutor Lilian Oliva, Assistant City Prosecutor Ruth Bernabe, and Department of Agriculture Assistant Regional Director Danilo Daguio. They shared the accomplishments of the 12 clusters of the RTF-ELCAC under the Bagong Pilipinas brand of governance of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

CD/AC/PIA