By Nora Soriño
Iligan City Bureau Chief
ILIGAN City ― A barangay chair of the neighboring city of Cagayan de Oro sounded alarm bells yesterday here on air that she is “very concerned” about a “medical mission” that came over her barangay on July 26, this year.
Nancy Aban, who introduced herself as barangay chair of Tignapuloan, Cagayan de Oro City, said that the “mission” was composed of personnel from this city of Iligan. She named Doris Barsomo and Ian Uy as among those who came to the said “mission.”
Barsomo, to note, is a regular employee of the city under the City Mayor’s Office while Uy is a city councilor who had just filed his Certificate of Candidacy for vice mayor here.
She said she was surprised because the group did not even tell her about the matter and she learned about this from one of the councilors of the barangay.
There was other personnel from Iligan coming from the Department of Agriculture and the city assessor, the names of which she was not able to get, she said.
She added that people here who attended said “mission” who were mostly indigenous people were “offered agricultural loans” ranging from P200,000 to P300,000 provided they will register as voters of Iligan city.
But she said the said people were made to understand that they would not be able to receive such mentioned amounts entirely as there would be several deductions.
Asked about how many hours would it take to travel from her barangay to this city, she said it will take three to four hours.
She said there was another schedule of similar mission still from this neighboring city and this time they would monitor it closely but it didn’t materialize, she said.
Earlier, a barangay chairman of Rogongon, a hinterland barangay of this city said that said people are “really from Rogongon,” this city.
Randy Pugoy, chair of Rogongon told reporters that the people had then registered as voters in Cagayan de Oro because of the “difficulty in traveling to the city proper because of bad roads.”
Now, he said, the roads are good and easy to travel. “So, now people decided to transfer their voting registration here in this city.”