Army tightens security for Nueva Vizcaya telecom facilities

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya — The Army is massing its forces along Dalton Pass here to provide added security to major telecommunication facilities in the wake of reports that the New People’s Army (NPA) was targeting them for attacks.

Col. Inocencio Mayanggao, commanding officer of the Army’s 54th Infantry Battalion, said a platoon of soldiers has been deployed to the facilities to reinforce existing security forces.

Being secured are facilities of the state-owned Communication Electronics Information System Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the cell sites of Globe Telecom, Smart Communications and Pilipino Telephone Corp. within a 5,000-meter radius of Dalton Pass.

The military’s move was prompted by recent NPA attacks on six cell sites of major mobile carriers in Central Luzon and the Ilocos region, and the telecommunications facilities of four companies, including the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., in Compostela Valley.

"We have enough troops to repel any attack by armed groups," Mayanggao said, disclosing that NPA guerrillas were recently sighted just a few kilometers from the communication facilities at Dalton Pass.

Situated atop the Caraballo mountain range, Dalton Pass lies at the boundary of Nueva Ecija and Nueva Vizcaya. It serves as the threshold of Cagayan Valley.

In another development, two NPA guerrillas surrendered to the military the other day after having been sentenced to death by an NPA "kangaroo court" for failing to torch several cell sites in North Cotabato.

The two rebels, Ryan Kayaon and Alejandro Gulanday, both belong to the NPA’s Front Committee 72 Unit Militia operating in Central Mindanao.

They said they decided to surrender after their commanders sentenced them to die by firing squad for backing out from their mission to burn the cell sites of Globe Telecom and Smart in North Cotabato last week.

They admitted being intimidated in carrying out their mission because the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and local government forces have already guarded their target facilities.

Maj. Julieto Ando, the 6th ID’s spokesman, said Kayaon and Gulanday, through emissaries, immediately sought the help of the Army’s 39th Infantry Battalion in Tulunan, North Cotabato, after learning that the "kangaroo court" of the NPA’s Front Committee 72 had sentenced them to death in absentia after they failed to carry out the attacks.

In Tarlac, police have filed charges of arson and robbery against 14 communist rebels, 10 of them new recruits, for the attack on the Smart cell site in Sta. Ignacia town last weekend. — With John Unson and Benjie Villa