Mankayan hydro plant denied over payment

By Rocky Ngalob

LATRINIDAD, Benguet -- For failing to pay the Free and Prior Informed Consent [FPIC] fee within the prescribed seven days, the Electronic Virtual One Stop Shop [EVOSS] system denied the Certification Precondition application of Polaris Power Corporation [PPDC] for its proposed 1.2 MW Payeo Hydropower Plant Project to be situated within the Ancestral Domain [AD] of Mankayan.
    Last March 8, 2019, former President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law
“An Act Establishing the Energy Virtual One-Stop Shop for the Purpose of Streamlining the Permitting Process of Power Generation, Transmission, and Distribution Projects” known as Republic Act 11234 which was authored by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian.
    Said law, among others, prescribed 105 calendar days in the conduct of the FPIC process.
    These 105 days were disaggregated within different stages of the FPIC process.
    Advent the enforceability EVOSS law, CPs may now be issued on the ground of delay and/or non-compliance to the prescribed period on the part of the NCIP. Should the delay be attributed on the part of project proponent/applicant, their CP application will be denied outright.
    PPDC was the very first, and as of this writing, the only renewable energy power
corporation in the Region CAR, who enrolled its proposed project within the EVOSS system.
    As per records, PPDC only passed preliminary stages of Field- Based Investigation [FBI].
    The FBI report said the proposed PHPP overlapped the Mankayan AD and affected the Kankana-ey Indigenous Cultural Communities / Indigenous Peoples [ICCs/IPs].
    With these findings, PPDC was required to undertake the mandatory FPIC process under Section 19 of NCIP Administrative Order 3 2012 or prevailing FPIC guidelines.
    A pre-FPIC conference was done between the NCIP FPIC team and representatives of PPDC last July 2023.
    The dates and schedules were then agreed and set for different stages of the FPIC process, all of which were written in the FPIC Work and Financial Plan [WFP] and approved by both the PPDC and NCIP.
    With the approval of the FPIC WFP, PPDC was required to deposit the FPIC fee, which in turn, will be used to defray the logistical expenses in the conduct of the FPIC.
    Such expenses, as per FPIC guidelines, were intended to be shouldered by the PPDC.
    The supposed FPIC Fee, if deposited, will be used for supplies, food, and transportation expenses of participants in the series of the community assemblies. However, PPDC failed to make the necessary deposit of the FPIC fee.
    In effect, PPDC’s proposed 1.2 MW Payeo Hydropower Plant Project was denied by EVOSS.
    Under FPIC guidelines, project proponents/ applicants such as PPDC, are
allowed to re-apply after six months following  denial of their CP application.
    No FPIC process for any similar proposal shall be undertaken and that the FPIC
process shall ipso facto stop.

Before the enactment of EVOSS law, CPs are issued only after the favorable consent or FPIC from the ICCs/IPs.