ANGELES CITY- In time for Pres. Aquino’s State of the Nation Address (SONA), the country’s biggest fisherfolk’s alliance issued yesterday its own State of the Fisherfolk Address (SOFA) giving the Aquino government an “ocean-deep” failing mark in helping 1.3 million small fishermen nationwide.
“Instead of providing the necessary socio-economic infrastructure for genuine development and increasing fish productivity and incomes, the President, like his predecessors, is hell bent on pursuing projects detrimental to fishing families and the national interest,” said the Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) in its SOFA.
Pamalakaya national chair Fernando Hicap said “President Aquino’s government has been treating 1.3 million small fishermen nationwide like children of lesser gods.”
“Fisherfolk and fishing communities have virtually been under attack from development projects under the ambitious Public Private Partnership (PPP) which offered many fishing areas and villages have been offered to the highest bidders,” he said.
Hicap cited the case of Laguna Lake “where a master plan would be implemented for 54 big ticket projects including the construction of 100-kilometer round dike around the lake and development of high end condominiums that would initially displace 82,000 households or nearly half-a-million people mainly fishermen, farmers and urban poor.”
Hicap also noted that “the National Reclamation Plan of the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) has been authorized to develop 38 major reclamation projects along the bay involving 26, 234 hectares of foreshore land areas.”
“All in all, there are 102 reclamation projects in the country are up under the PPP,” he added.
“The impacts of reclamation include destruction of marine habitats and ecological balance, loss of livelihood and community displacement of fishing villages, diminution and eradication of the natural defense barriers of coastal communities, as well as climate change and storm surges,” he stressed.
Hicap also cited the “sad stories” wrought by widespread magnetite mining in many coastal areas.”
“The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the provincial and local government units in Cagayan refused to recall magnetite mining activities in the towns of Aparri, Buguey, Lallo, Camalaniugan, and Gonzaga from ravaging the marine environment of Cagayan River and its coastal areas.
About 12,000 hectares of Cagayan coastal area is primed for black sand mining at the expense of livelihood and environment,” he noted.
Pamalakaya, in another statement issued together with Anakpawis party list, also cited the controversial Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Free Port (Apeco) project as one of the anti-poor PPP projects of the administration.
The two groups described Apeco as a result of “the long-running political horse trading between the Aquino and the Angara camps” that started with the support of the Angara clan for his presidential bid in 2010.
The Apeco project, they said, led to the alleged landgrabbing of over 12,000 hectares of agricultural, forestal and foreshore lands in Casiguran, Aurora where the project is located.
