DESPITE what it claimed to be the “weakening presence” of communist guerrillas, an Army officer said government forces remain in the Bondoc Peninsula in Quezon pprovince.
Col. Generoso Bolina, Armed Forces Southern Luzon Command spokesman, said the Army will send a battalion to replace the 76th Infantry Battalion (IB) of the 201st Infantry Brigade, that started trasferring to Mindoro on Tuesday.
After staying for 10 months in the Bondoc Peninsula, the 76IB will transfer to Mindoro to replace the 80IB, which is due for scheduled battalion retraining at Fort Ramon Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija, Capt. Ramon V. Ibarrientos, battalion spokesman, said in a statement.
Bolina confirmed Ibarrientos’s statement and that said soldiers under the 76IB have began redeploying from Catanauan, Quezon, to Occidental Mindoro.
“The retraining of the 80IB of the 204th Infantry Brigade prompted the transfer of troops from Quezon,” Bolina said.
He added that another battalion would replace the 76th IB since “we still need to maintain three battalions in Quezon province.”
He explained that the Armed Forces maintains two battalions on Mindoro Island, one for Mindoro Occidental and another for Mindoro Oriental.
There will be another battalion to be deployed here because the 76IB can’t stay in Mindoro for too long, Bolina said in Filipino.
However, Bolina declined to identify the battalion that would replace the 76IB and the date that its replacement would arrive.
He added that the replacement would be swift so that the New People’s Army (NPA) would have difficulty to adjust and re-gain whatever territories the armed insurgent group lost.
“Bago pa sila maka-adjust may bago nang battalion. Kaya nga dapat medyo mabilis iyong pagpalit,” Bolina said.
Bolina claims that the NPA strength in Bondoc Peninsula has diminished from 70 armed guerrillas in 2011 to only 38 as of the end of last year. He did not say how he arrived at the figure.
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