Paracelis trivia

HAPPY WEEKEND
Gina Dizon

PARACELIS, Mountain Province -- The driver said we already reached Paracelis Poblacion after a 6- hour journey from Bontoc via the narrow and sharp curved roads of neighboring Natonin.

I scanned the Poblacion to find a wide, rugged and gravelly road with some little stores lined up near the street. The main road of the Poblacion area is not concreted nor cemented.

It was my first time, and that was during the recent May 2010 elections to visit Paracelis found on the edge of Mountain Province. This agricultural town rich with corn and rice is located near the equally rice and corn producing province of Isabela on the east, Kalinga up north and Ifugao south.

Surprising, as I was not able to find some relatively bigger buildings like a bank or a mini mart for that matter commonly found in any Poblacion. I came to know later that there is no bank in town but people here save their money in cooperatives.

I found little stores adjacent to each other selling dry goods including slippers, candies and crackers. A few stores were selling some kitchen utensils and some hardware materials.

I walked around looking for Paracetamol to cure my already numbed and migrained head and found at least three drug stores. I also found a few shops retailing SMART and Globe airtime loads.

I continued walking from one store to the other looking for a newspaper and found out there was no news stand. I repeat, no news stand at all to sell even Bandera man nu isu. Only in Paracelis.

Paracelis has been historically and notoriously alleged to be a milking cow of infrastructure road projects. How true? Through all the years, Paracelis seemed to be a republic by itself though composing one of the ten towns of Mountain Province. I guess the distance where one spends quite a sum to reach the capital town of Bontoc, must have added to the seemingly-isolation of the town.

Whatever happened and happens here seems/seemed to be known only among the people in the place unless the locals will talk about it or reporters will go and interview officials and people here. Should there be news from Paracelis, chances are, these are shocking news like election- related violence or the 2008 killing of long- time mayor Cesar Rafael.

Updates about government projects implemented or not implemented in the town are rarely known, if not known, it seems so. Prove me wrong. With a town which does not have any commercial local or national newspaper sold in town, it makes me wonder how the people access , analyze, or release information for that matter. Of course, the radio and the TV is accessible yet, a printed reading material where one can refer to and photo copy a page of a newspaper it if that is the case, is not available. By the way, there is a lone photo copy shop in town.

It is interesting to know how much and how far the people know about the P12 million loan of the Paracelis Water District from the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA). An initial P4.6 million was already released and the amount of P500,000 also reportedly released by outgoing Mayor Pedro Almeda as LGU counterpart.

How much and how far do the people know if funds have already been released, how much money was already received by the LGU/govt entity and how much funds spent, how much money is still to come, where the money comes from, who is giving the funds to whom and what the money is for. I’m curious to know.

Paracelis is a 3rd class municipality with some 3,401 households in the 9 barangays of Anonat, Bacarri,Bananao, Bantay, Butigue, Bunot, Buringal, Palitod and Paracelis Poblacion composing some 115 sitios. Three major ethnoliguistic groups- the Gaddang, Balangao, and Kalingas generally are settled in the mountainous areas of the town. Migrants from the lowlands occupy the low-lying areas and compose around one third of the total population of the municipality.
With a mixed population, it is interesting to know how the different tribes including the migrants chart a common development for this rice and corn producing municipality.

This town found at the eastern frontier of the province is basically agricultural, which makes irrigation facilities a common project of the National Irrigation Authority. Now I came to know from a reliable source that some NIA projects here have broken down. Tell me what you are thinking and let us talk about it over a cup of coffee.

Speaking about irrigation, there are two main rivers here- the Siffu River and the Mallig River. The Siffu River is also known as Kadaklan River. It springs from a watershed comprising about 27% of the total land area of the municipality; and originates from the northeastern slopes of the mountain ridges of Barlig and Banaue of Ifugao. The waters here flows to barangay Palitud towards Roxas, Isabela. Its tributaries are the rivers of Kadaclan- Siffu, Saliok, and Paracelis.

The Mallig River is also a tributary of the Cagayan River flowing to Isabela. Comprising about 73% of the total land area of the municipality, its tributaries are the Bananao and Walawad Creek, and the Camaguan Creek.

This makes irrigation waters a rich source of income for the LGU if a bill as proposed by MP congressional candidate Jupiter Dominguez, gets filed by the winning candidate and passed, enabling the province to get a share for the irrigation waters which flows towards Isabela.

To add more trivia, come every election time, Paracelis is the last municipality of all the ten towns of Mountain Province to remit its election returns. In the previous 2010 elections despite Smartmatic services, Paracelis proved to be the last town, as always, to send its election returns to the provincial canvassing board. Why? Because there were no transmitting devises included in the Smartmatic kits supposedly to be used by the technicians. How so? Interesting!

Composed of some 24,705 residents as of 2000 census, there are some 16,000 registered voters making Paracelis one of the vote-rich towns of the province aside from the vegetable-growing town of Bauko. Any politician who wants to win the elections, chances are, invests in Paracelis. What happens after the election returns are known, is another story to tell.