From the Manila Times (Aug 26): Stakeholders approve military camp in Marawi
Stakeholders and lot owners in Barangay Kapantaran of Marawi City are in favor of establishing a military camp in the Old Capitol site of the besieged city, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has said.
Col. Romeo Brawner Jr., commander of the Philippine Army’s civil-military operations regiment, said the military had conducted dialogues with its stakeholders and owners of lots in Kapantaran and the general sentiment was they are in favor of a military camp “because of the emphasis on the security” of Marawi’s rehabilitation process.
“They (lot owners and stakeholders) are in favor of this. But for now, we are just arranging the buying of lands here,” he said in a media conference in Marawi City on Friday.
In January, President Rodrigo Duterte along with Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and high-ranking military officials led a groundbreaking ceremony on the lot where the military camp will be built.
Brawner earlier said that the 10 hectares of the area located on top of the hill overlooking the business district up to the lake are owned by the government.
But several citizens in Marawi opposed the plan through the Ranaw Multi-Sectoral Movement.
In a statement last March, the group urged Duterte to stop the building of the military camp and an economic zone (ecozone) arguing that Task Force Bangon Marawi was ignoring their plight.
The group claimed that the task force head, Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) chairman Eduardo del Rosario, was the one who presented the idea of an ecozone.
Mapandi, Lilod roads closed
Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. Ramiro Rey, commander of Joint Task Group Ranao, also confirmed in the same conference that the roads in the villages of Mapandi and Lilod were closed temporarily as military troops were still retrieving unexploded bombs and ordnances left during the five-month siege in Marawi.
Rey said he was given a month to recover the unexploded bombs “slowly and manually.”
“Once the retrieval has been completed, we will be opening the roads again to the public,” he added.
Rey noted the military has so far recovered unexploded bombs and improvised explosive devices seen above the ground of the main battle area while those that went beneath the ground are still underway for retrieval operations.
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