The Department of Social Welfare & Development and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples are working closely to come up with recommendations through a resolution that would strengthen policy to address the issues and concerns affecting the different indigenous tribes.
This comes as the DSWD and the NCIP held Tuesday the Indigenous People’s Congress for the Visayas cluster at a local hotel in Dumaguete.
Shalaine Marie Lucero, outgoing DSWD regional director of the now defunct Negros Island Region disclosed Tuesday afternoon in an interview that the Indigenous Peoples Congress for the Visayas cluster was a gathering of at least ten IP groups from Regions 6, 7 and the recently abolished NIR.
Lucero explained the congress not only gave tribute to the IPs who showcased their talents in music and dance, among others, but more importantly, to draft a resolution asking the government to come up with a police or guidelines not only for the DSWD but for the local government units and other stakeholders as well to take on the issues encountered by these indigenous peoples.
Admittedly, these IP’s have limited access to social services and the DSWD has encountered some other issues during their integration efforts of the indigenous groups in mainstream society, she said.
“We all know that it is difficult for the IP communities to access social services because they are in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas”, the DSWD executive stressed.
Many of them live in far-flung areas and not all are developed although the DSWD, through its KALAHI-CIDSS program, has helped them by building roads leading to some communities and constructing health centers and day care centers, she said.
But not all of these IP communities can be provided with the same as yet, Lucero added.
Another concern that the indigenous groups are complaining of is the violation of rights to ancestral domain of lands that they believe belongs to them, she pointed out.
The NCIP, being the lead agency on IP’s concerns, is doing something about that, “but hopefully we can draft a policy that would give them more protection of their communities, identity, heritage, and culture as these ethnic groups are important treasures”, Lucero said.
Around 10 IP groups in the Visayas were represented during the congress to include, among others, the Bukidnon, Ata, Ati, Badjao and Escaya groups.
Based on the validated number of IPs in Negros Island, the DSWD official disclosed there are 69,000 of them with some 28,000 considered below the poverty level.
Meanwhile, Director Anna Burgos, Office-in-Charge of the NCIP for Regions 6, 7 and 8, lauded the DSWD for implementing programs that would cater to the needs of the indigenous peoples.
They have a directive from the NCIP central office to closely coordinate with and support the programs and projects of DSWD, Burgos said.
Asked about the Php 1,000 budget of Congress for the NCIP in 2018, Burgos said they feel sad about it but did not want to discuss more about it as they were scheduled to present to the Senate on Thursday their proposed budget for next year.
Burgos, however, admitted they feel sad about the move to give the NCIP a P1,000 budget for 2018 especially because they have lined up programs and projects for 2018, especially the Philippine Indigenous People’s ethnographies.
The ethnographic research would help find out the location of indigenous people’s in the regions and at the same time their ancestral domain and their socio-economic profiles, Burgos disclosed. (Judy Flores Partlow/PNA)