Loren wants probe on fake Cordi-like fabrics manufactured abroad

By Vanne Eelaine Terrazola

QUEZON CITY -- House deputy speaker and Antique Representative Loren Legarda is seeking a legislative inquiry on the sale of counterfeit Cordillera garments and fabrics from abroad.
    Legarda filed on Feb. 8, House Resolution No. 1549, calling on the lower chamber’s Special Committee on Creative Industry and Performing Arts to look into the “appropriation” of the indigenous weave patterns following a recent report that machine-made replicas from China are being sold in local markets.
    Native weavers had appealed to the government to give their crafts protection.
    “Such influx of counterfeit goods poses a risk to rural livelihoods of indigenous cultural communities in terms of market competition and is also to the detriment of sustaining their culture and creative productivity,” Legarda said in the measure.
    Quoting the Indigenous Peoples’ Right Act (IPRA), the lawmaker said indigenous cultural communities and peoples have the right over their cultural traditions and customs. 
    The law mandated the government to “preserve, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures as well as the right to the restitution of cultural, intellectual, religious, and spiritual property taken without their free and prior informed consent”.
    Legarda said related laws on the protection of traditional property rights of indigenous peoples should be revisited.
    The proposed House inquiry, she said, aims to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights and cultural heritage of the Philippines’ indigenous peoples and communities.
    “Explicit systems, procedures, legal protections and remedies should be made available and easily accessible to our indigenous peoples and communities who are threatened by these imports,” she said.
    Legarda filed last year House Bill No. 7811, which seeks the creation of a “comprehensive” cultural archive that will provide an inventory of all cultural properties of the different ethno-linguistic groups of the country.
    The bill also seeks to mandate the payment of royalties for the use of the cultural property of the indigenous peoples.