AFTER a few tense moments, 70-year-old Jamela Sarip Asama heaved a sigh of relief after her application was stamped as approved by the legal unit of the Marawi Compensation Board MCB) last Thursday.
Earlier, a week ago, the MCB legal unit found Asama’s application lacking some documentation and requested her to produce them if she wanted to be paid for her house made of mixed concrete and wood in Marawi City.
“Shukran. Now I will wait for the board to review my claim,” Asama said.
If approved by the board, Asama would be compensated P9,000 per square meter for her house that was destroyed by the five-months shelling and fighting between the government military and the Daesh-inspired Maute gunmen in 2017.
Lawyer Norossana Alauya-Sani, head of the MCB legal unit said she stamped as approved the papers of Asama after she was satisfied all the required documentation was submitted.
“Actually, we gave Asama a docket number the first time she came here so she would not undergo reprocessing. All she had to do was to cite her docket number and we checked the documents she was required to produce,” Sani said.
Sani said Asami’s claims would be reviewed by another group of lawyers and assessors as the second step before the board would decide to pay her or not.
She said problems of lack of documentation, affidavits, and sworn statements beset most of the claims by the estimated 100,000 residents who lost their belongings, properties, and buildings during the fighting that destroyed most of Marawi’s cultural and commercial district.
Sani said they have asked 50 percent of the 1,000 claimants who went to the MCB compensation claims office in Barangay Marinaut West in Marawi City.
“Most were able to comply with the required documentation when they came back,” she said.
Sani said they now average 200 to 300 applicants a day. Of these, she said they found two applications as spurious.
MCB Chair Layer Maisara Dandamun-Latip said claimants have two ways of filing their claims—one is online on the MCB website and two is the onsite receiving center in Barangay Marinaut West.
Latiph said more than 11,000 claimants have applied online and more than 1,000 residents have visited the MCB compensation claims office in Barangay Marinaut West.
Under Republic Act No. 116961, otherwise known as the Marawi Siege Victims Compensation Act of 2022, the government provided P1 billion to pay Marawi residents who lost properties or have relatives killed as a result of the fighting.
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