By Nora Soriño
Iligan City Bureau Chief

ILIGAN City ― A city councilor here, in a statement yesterday to reporters, said that Cagayan de Oro city “has encroached” the area that rightfully belongs to this city.

This was the gist of the statement of City Councilor Ian Uy in response to the currentl hot issue of city officials and employees going to a barangay in Cagayan de Oro offering agricultural services particularly to Barangay Tignapoloan.

Uy said that this is not the whole area of said barangay, only sitios that Cagayan de Oro “has encroached” which really belongs to this city of Iligan, hence this city’s extension of services there.

He named the sitio of Macayan but could not name the other sitios. He added the people in these sitios could not be given assistance from Cagayan de Oro, citing an instance when they asked for some Gmelina seedlings there but failed so they had to come to this city of Iligan for that purpose.

Per data from the city planning office here, Uy added, these sitios really belong to the city of Iligan and even old residents here “know about this.”

Asked about efforts taken to have them registered in the Commission on Elections office here in this city, Uy said he is “not familiar” with such move.

“This really is a boundary issue,” he said and this city of Iligan has the right to give these people services that they deserve. He is also “not in a position to answer questions about the ‘loans’ being offered Uy said as he is ‘not the right person’” to shed light on this.

Earlier, the chair of a barangay in Cagayan de Oro in a statement on air, revealed that three of the residents there had already been released their “agricultural” loans.

Tignapoloan village chair Nancy Aban added that the three residents in her village had been released loans of P250,000 each but they were able to receive only P120,000 each.

She then expressed concerns as the collateral of said loans were their lands. But she added she was assured by these people that they are still going to vote in Cagayan de Oro as their registration to the elections next year “has not been erased” even as they had been required to register in Iligan. There are to date, 46 of these people mostly Indigenous People.

Some Iligan city residents, though, have questioned the “timing” of the services on the said area.