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Cabaero: Fish and chips
By Nini B. Cabaero

What's curious about discussions on exploratory oil drillings in waters off Cebu and Bohol is the promise of a share of the revenue to the local government and compensation to the displaced fisher families.

While the displacement is already starting, the share of the proceeds is still a promise and the compensation to fishers is a matter under question.

In Cebu, those feeling the effects of the exploratory drillings for oil and gas by foreign companies are communities in Pinamungajan and Alonguinsan towns.

Fishermen complained that when the drilling started, their livelihood ended.

The Japan Petroleum Exploration Co. that is conducting the drilling has reportedly cordoned off areas. Marine security forces led by the Coast Guard and the provincial police have been called to protect the areas for drilling. Residents who try to bring their boats close to these areas are shooed away.

“The Coast Guard immediately meets us if we go near the drilling area,” said fisherman Fortunato Mercado in a Sun.Star Cebu report last Friday. The amount of fish they used to get in a day’s work has dwindled, he and other fishermen said. In exchange for the disturbance, some of them get rice rations distributed by local officials who have been challenged to address issues at their levels relative to the drillings.

Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia said the town mayors should be able to handle the “discordant voices” in their localities. She said she believes Alogunisan Mayor Cynthia Moreno and Pinamungajan Mayor Geraldine Yapha would be able to address these problems.

But what is intended to empower might end up “dis-empowering.” There is a chance things would go the way of a single-focus approach towards a complex problem.

Their eyes are on the money. Local officials optimistically await the financial bounty from a successful oil or gas exploration, while fishers look forward to rice rations and additional financial assistance. Money chips in exchange for the fewer fish they now gather.

The fishermen, probably for lack of the ability to find other ways to fill their stomachs, tend to carry on a fatalistic attitude. As Mercado said in the same interview, “They (drillers) are already there. We cannot force them to leave. We only want to get just compensation.”

Asked for what “just compensation” meant, he said two sacks of rice and some money.

A pastoral letter by the Tagbilaran clergy on the oil drillings last July said, “The history of oil exploration is replete with examples of individual and corporate greed and insensitivity to the people in the locality.”

In the case of the fishermen, who would show them more sensitivity and tell them they cannot be adequately compensated for the loss of their livelihood with rice or chips?

There is this saying that goes “give a man fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Well, he learned how to fish, but even that is being taken away from him.

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