MARAWI CITY – President Rodrigo Duterte has assured affected landowners in the planned construction of a new Army camp they will receive due compensation.
In his visit to this city Tuesday, Duterte gave the assurance as the affected land is located within a military reservation.
“I’m planning to set up a camp here, but I will pay you,” the President said during his visit to the temporary shelter site in Barangay Sagonsongan in this city, referring to the affected residents who will be uprooted once the construction of the camp starts.
Military officials said the new camp will be established on a 10-hectare lot in Barangay Kapantaran, where the old city hall complex is located, and will cost the government P400 million.
Currently, Marawi hosts Campo Ranao, home of the Philippine Army’s 103rd Infantry Brigade, a unit of the First Infantry Division.
Campo Ranao has been an essential military installation, providing logistics and other support to the soldiers fighting the extremists at the height of the Marawi siege last year.
Some sectors, however, opposed the planned construction of a new military camp.
Aida Ibrahim, spokesperson of Tindeg Ranao, a group of Maranao residents displaced by the fighting in Marawi, said she sees no need for another military camp and that Campo Ranao was more than enough. (Jigger J. Jerusalem/PNA)
