'Kambisita 2' set to identify more Marawi properties for rehab

MARAWI CITY -- The Task Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM) said it hopes that through the second "Kambisita," the ownership of lots and buildings inside the 250-hectare "most affected areas" in the city will be identified before the actual ground rehabilitation by the end of September this year.

TFBM chairman and Housing Secretary Eduardo del Rosario said the government finds it necessary to identify the individual owners of the properties "with or without titles".

"As of now, we do not know exactly who owned the lots and the buildings. That is the very reason kung bakit gagawa tayo ng (why we are organizing) Kambisita (part) 2 and it will start on September 10," del Rosario said.

Kambisita is a portmanteau of Kambalingan, a Maranao term for "to return", and "bisita" or visit, where residents are allowed to see their properties inside the city's most affected area at a given time -- escorted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the local government unit and the TFBM.

TFBM said that during the Kambisita, residents will personally identify the boundaries of their lots for the government to estimate the cost of damage that will be the basis for reparation. The most affected areas are composed of 24 barangays in the city.

During the first Kambisita in April, residents were allowed to visit their houses and properties for three days from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. to retrieve whatever is left in the five-month war between government forces and the ISIS-inspired Maute group.

Preparations

To prepare for the second Kambisita, there will be seminars and workshops for groups that will assist the residents in locating their lots. This will be led by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) headed by Assistant Secretary Michelle Go.

"All the agencies involved in the Land Resource Management (LRM) will be there to locate exactly the boundaries, the ownership and also to estimate the cost of damage in every structure," del Rosario said, referring to the agency that will lead the survey of the land properties.

Col. Romeo Brawner, Jr., deputy commander of the Joint Task Force Ranao, said they are doing a social cartography to measure the lots claimed by their respective owners and link it with the social data that the LRM gathers.

Social cartography entails the use of a drone and other equipment to record the exact GPS coordinates of a claimed property. The data will then be matched and validated with the social data taken by the DSWD from the claimants.

The Office of the Civil Defense will take pictures of the house or building to identify the kind of materials used in the building and how many floors it is made of. This would help the government estimate the amount of the building that could be then a basis for the giving of financial assistance, Brawner said.

Aside from the seminars and workshops for the Kambisita 2, the TFBM has also procured special equipment and form various teams to expedite the land survey.

"We are looking at 18 teams (to be organized and trained) at mayroon tayong reserve. They will start training by the first week of September," Brawner added.

Meanwhile, Norodin Lucman, a Muslim leader who lives in the most affected area before the siege, said residents are getting impatient of the delays in the actual start of the rehabilitation works and hoped they will be given the chance to rebuild their lives on their own.

Lucman said residents should be immediately allowed to return to their homes and "start anew and pick-up the pieces of our lives, clean-up our property and perhaps rebuild" he said.

Lucman is one of the residents trapped at his house in Barangay Moncado Kadingilan at the start of the siege with more than 70 other people.

The delayed rehabilitation, Lucman said, could only bring back bad memories on their five-month ordeal, which included having to survive military air strikes and being fired upon by extremist gunmen while being witnesses to the rotting corpses of their neighbors. (PNA)