PAGADIAN CITY, Zamboanga del Sur -- At least 28 New People’s Army (NPA) rebels surrendered to military authorities in the province of Zamboanga Sibugay, officials said Friday.
Capt. Clint Antipala, the Army’s 1st Infantry Division information officer, said the NPA rebels surrendered around 10 a.m. Thursday at the headquarters of the 102nd Infantry Brigade in Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay.
Antipala said the NPA surrenderers, under the NPA’s Western Mindanao Regional Party Committee (WMRPC), used to operate in Zamboanga Peninsula provinces and Misamis Occidental. They turned over seven firearms and explosives.
The surrenderers were presented to the Regional Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict-9 (RTF-ELCAC-9), represented by Interior and Local Government Zamboanga Sibugay provincial director Mario Baterna together with Brig. Gen. Generoso Ponio, Army’s 1st Infantry Division commander and other officials.
Col. Leonel Nicolas, the Army’s 102nd Infantry Brigade commander, promised to enroll the 28 NPA surrenderers to the government's Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (ECLIP).
ECLIP is one of the flagship programs of the Duterte administration that aims to provide social equity to former members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) and its militia components to reintegrate them into mainstream society.
Meanwhile, Ponio reiterated that the government remains "serious in the implementation" of President Rodrigo Duterte's E.O. 70, which seeks to employ the "whole-of-nation approach" in ending communist rebel armed conflicts in the countryside.
“Convergence among government agencies, local government units and other stakeholders is the key to end the decades-long communist armed conflict in Mindanao,” Ponio said.
Diane (not her real name), one of the surrenderers, said she was deceived by his NPA recruiter who assured her that her family would receive financial support while she fought in the mountains.
"But the finances they’ve promised were not able to reach our family,” Diane said in the dialect.
The surrender ceremony was also attended by Zamboanga del Norte Vice Gov. Senen Angeles, Dennis Baguio, a representative of Zamboanga Sibugay Gov. Wilter Yap Palma, and officials of the Department of Labor and Employment, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, police, and battalion commanders under the Army's 102nd Infantry Brigade. (PNA)
