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2023-05-25 Southeast Asia
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Philippine govt announces reparations package for Marawi residents
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 [BenarNews] After waiting six years, Jaslia Abbas is among residents of Marawi who expect to finally be compensated soon for their homes destroyed during fighting between government troops and Moslem snuffies in this southern Philippine city.
The mother of six said she hoped to get cash needed to rebuild the home she had to abandon when the pro-Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
snuffies seized Marawi in May 2017 and provoked a fierce urban battle, which lasted five months before Philippine forces retook the city.
Continued from Page 2
That’d be the ISIS-linked Maute group, the project of former MILF fighters Omar and Abdullah Maute, also called the Islamic State of Lanao del Sur (Mindanao). It was a family affair, with the family matriarch arranging financing and various relatives filling out the organization chart, just as other relatives have been doing in MILF. Cousins are regularly reported as picked up —or killed — often in the company of jihadis from other groups in the area, so clearly their loyalty is to jihad rather than a particular organization. "I have waited for six years for this. I pray that the money will bring some closure to the pain of uncertainty I bear for all these years," Abbas told a BenarNews correspondent who visited Marawi this week.
More than 1,200 krazed killers, civilians and government troops were killed in the battle that left much of the lakeside city in ruins. The fighting ended on Oct. 23, 2017, but Marawi has not been totally rebuilt and some unwent kaboom! bombs dropped by military planes and other ordnance remain lodged beneath the ground.
Abbas, 47, and her family lived as nomads, transferring from one evacuation camp to another.
Abbas spoke to BenarNews at the newly renovated Rizal Park in Marawi City, where the nine-member Marawi Compensation Board on Tuesday signed the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR), which will roll out 1 billion pesos (U.S. $17.9 million) in tax-free reparations for residents who lost properties during the fighting.
Maisara Dandamun-Latiph, a lawyer who chairs the compensation board, said the IRR would be published in all Philippine newspapers of general circulation beginning this week.
"After 15 days, the board will start evaluating the claims and schedule the payments," she said.
The government would pay 35,000 pesos ($628) per square meter for any concrete building destroyed or damaged and about half of that amount for wooden houses, said Mabandes Diron Jr., another attorney and fellow board member. Those who lost a relative or a loved one in the fighting are eligible for a compensation package valued at 350,000 pesos ($6,280).
Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong, who represents a district of Marawi in Congress, reminded the board that its main job was not only to compensate affected residents financially.
"The board should see to it that it [the compensation package] is just and it should listen to the people who have suffered so much in the past six years," Adiong said.
In 2018, Task Force Bangon Marawi, the government’s lead rehabilitation agency, estimated that it needed at least 50 billion pesos (about $1 billion) to restore and rehabilitate the once beautiful city.
Drieza Liningding of the Marawi Consensus Group, which advocates for city residents, said 5,000 families were still struggling and living in temporary shelters.
The so-called Main Affected Area (MAA), where the snuffies made their last stand, remains off-limits to residents although the government has constructed new mosques, buildings and a sprawling sports stadium.
"It’s a welcome development and we hope the soonest the application for the compensation will start, the better," Liningding told BenarNews on Wednesday.
"It is long overdue. The IDPs have had no choice but to wait," he said, referring to internally displaced persons.
The pace of rehabilitation in Marawi has been extremely slow, including basic infrastructure, Liningding said. The siege by the snuffies began barely a week after he got married in 2017. All three of his children were born while the family stayed at a relative’s home. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2023-05-25 00:00||
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