NCIP asked to stop FPIC of opposed Kalinga dam project

September 14, 2020 Provincial

The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) via a petition by an indigenous people’s group is being urged to declare the failure of the Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) process for the Upper Tabuk Hydropower Project (UTHP).
Representatives of the nongovernment group Cordillera People’s Alliance also called on NCIP-CAR to hold accountable the project proponent as well as the NCIP-Kalinga officers for alleged violations of the rights of indigenous communities to integrity and self-determination.
The 17-megawatt UTHP is a project of the DPJ Engineers & Consultants (DPJ) owned by Engr. Daniel Peckley Jr., which involves the construction of 35.4 meters high dam along the Tanudan River which will create a reservoir of around 30 hectares and a total storage capacity of around 5 million cubic meters.
In November 2019, Taloctoc and Malbong, two of the five indigenous cultural communities (ICCs) declared by the NCIP as affected areas, manifested their rejection of the project in a “Resolution of Non-Consent”.
CPA Secretary General Bestang Dekdeken said that the petition was executed way back February this year by 189 individuals belonging to the Taloctoc, Naneng, Malbong and Minanga ICCs following NCIP’s lifting of the Temporary Suspension Order on the FPIC process for the UTHP.
The petition was also executed in protest of Engr. Peckley Jr.’s avowals that the project will push through within the ancestral domains of only the ICCs who gave their consent for the project. The affected ICCs, Dekdeken said, “would impact adversely on all of their ancestral domains,” adding, “the affected ICCs have already said “No” when the project was first introduced from 2009-2012.
When it was revived in 2018 and up to the present, many still say “No”. How many times would ICCs say “No” before the project is recalled?” Petitioners also criticized how the project proponent allegedly colluded with individuals belonging to ICCs and to NCIP-Kalinga for the reconstitution of the Minanga, an old tribe that had long been subsumed to the Naneng.
“This bore serious implications, such as the Minanga and their lands being removed from the protection of the Naneng’s “bodbodong” (peacepacts), Naneng’s bodong with other tribes being jeopardized, and Naneng’s integrity as a “binodngan” tribe being violated.”
“The UTHP has clearly created problems within communities that would not have been there if the project was not there in the first place,” Dekdeken added.