MARAWI, Philippines – 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) on Thursday, July 20.

A week ago, the MCB legal unit found Asama’s application lacking some documents and asked her to produce them if she wanted to be paid for her house made of mixed concrete and wood in Marawi City.

“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 of 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 Asama’s application as approved after she was satisfied with all the required documents she 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 Asama’s claims would be reviewed by another group of lawyers and assessors as the second step before the board decides whether to pay her or not.

She said problems of lack of documents, affidavits, and sworn statements beset most of the claims by residents who lost their belongings, properties, and buildings during the fighting that destroyed most of Marawi’s cultural and commercial district. The MCB estimated that about 100,000 Maranaos suffered losses as a result of the five-month fighting in 2017.

Sani said they had to ask about half of the 1,000 claimants who went to the MCB compensation claims office in Barangay Marinaut West in Marawi City to complete their papers first and then return.

“Most were able to comply with the required documents 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 chairperson Maisara Dandamun-Latip said claimants can either file their claim online or by going to the MCB receiving center in Barangay Marinaut West.

Latip said more than 11,000 claimants have applied online, and more than 1,000 residents have visited the MCB compensation claims office so far.

Based on 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. – Rappler.com