INFRA PROJECT. Negros Oriental Governor Roel Degamo (left) talks with Army and local officials during an outreach mission in Sitio Avocado in Barangay Talalak, Sta. Catalina town. The activity, held Tuesday (July 27, 2021), is part of the province's efforts to alleviate the lives of the people in insurgency-affected areas through the Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (TF-ELCAC). (Video screengrab from the Facebook page of the Negros Oriental provincial government)
DUMAGUETE CITY – Thousands of residents in villages forming part of the Tamlang Valley Convergence Area in Negros Oriental are set to benefit from infrastructure projects of the provincial government as part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s whole-of-nation approach to end insurgency.
In an interview on Wednesday, Capitol public information officer Bimbo Miraflor said Governor Roel Degamo announced on Tuesday that the provincial government had allocated PHP20 million for the construction of a road connecting Sitio Kakha to Sitio Avocado in Barangay Talalak in Sta. Catalina town.
Degamo led the Negros Oriental Provincial Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (TF-ELCAC) in an outreach program at Tamlang Valley, specifically in Sitio Avocado, to alleviate poverty end the Maoist rebellion in the province.
The Armed Forces’ Engineering Battalion and the provincial engineering office are building the said road, which is just the first of a few other roads that will connect to other barangays in the Tamlang Valley.
The provincial government is also planning to build a community primary hospital in the area, Miraflor said.
The Tamlang Valley Convergence Area includes the barangays of Apoloy and Mantikil in Siaton; Enrique Villanueva in Sibulan; Dobdob in Valencia; Talalak in Sta. Catalina; and Magsusunog in Pamplona.
The outreach program included free medical and dental consultation, medicines, minor surgery, circumcision, animal welfare services, and distribution of seeds and fertilizers, Miraflor said.
Adrian Sedillo, chief of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said in a separate interview that while the provincial government is funding these projects, these form part of the ELCAC program to address insurgency.
Sedillo said since Barangay Talalak is a priority village under Negros Oriental’s TF-ELCAC, the team decided to sustain its visitation and monitoring in the area there to show the residents the genuine desire of the government to ease their plight.
Last year, the team visited Talalak village to conduct an ocular inspection for a road project connecting Sitio Avocado and Sitio Tamlang, he noted.
“These areas have to be constantly revisited as part of confidence-building because government projects will not prosper without the support of the people,” Sedillo said. (PNA)
