He built roads for mills

Negros Governor Joseph Marañon Tuesday paid tribute to former Governor Alfredo Montelibano Jr. as a sugar farmer whose heart maintained a keen awareness of the needs of sugar producers.

This may best be gleaned by the fact that it was Montelibano, himself a former head of the Northern Negros Planters Association, who had the provincial road constructed along Sagay to the Sagay Central in Barangay Bato.

It was also Montelibano, who noticing the need for a transport link, had the First Farmers Road constructed. That enabled the first cooperative mill to operate at full blast and with a good enough road to handle the long line of heavily loaded vehicles bringing canes to the mill.

In many other areas of the province, farm-to-market roads were constructed during Montelibano's term. Most of these had endured the wear and tear of time and the carriers. But undoubtedly they were the key to the development of the countrysides.

But one of the most pro-people project hatched during his term as governor was Montelibano's construction of the veterans pavilion at the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital compound.

Later, this was converted into the pediatric ward. It just happened that only a few veterans survived and insisted on getting accommodated in the ward intended for them. And, true to enough, there were more children being born and needed to be attended to. Thus, the veterans ward had to be converted to conform to realities – pediatrics ward.

If there was one virtue of Montelibano, it was his knack to immediately grasp the implications of a problem or situation. He never hesitated to act when needed.

Always, there was the eye for the common tao. It was my fortune that as chief executive assistant, I often found myself in the forefront of monitoring developments or problems elsewhere.

When, for example, barangay folks of Cabadiangan and Manlukahoc told former Col. Salvador Abcede and myself of their plight – the lack of a barangay road to Mambaroto, Montelibano then asked me and Engineer Bert Losaria to find ways of providing them what they had hungered for.

Now remember that this was at the height of the insurgency. Most Cabadiangan and Manlukahoc folks had evacuated their communities because of the New People's Amy action.

Well, I sent ahead student volunteers to Cabadiangan. These were mostly BRIC members. They were well-intentioned young people who were motivated to do something positive to help people. And they went there in droves. They were later joined by volunteers from Barangay Gil Montilla and other Sipalay barangays. And they took turns, equipped with their own food, in constructing the provincial road.

But it was also there where I discovered the wisdom for the unlettered. One of these old men, listened in to Losaria and Abcede trying to solve the problem of bringing in culverts from across the Kalatong River . The trucks could not ferry them across. And there just was no conceivable way we could put culverts on the road.

Suddenly, the old man asked me whether it was possible for us to make use of a log that had a hollow center. And Losaria enthusiastically welcomed the idea.And so, it was that the provincial road was finally completed. Despite the obvious danger to his person, Montelibano did not hesitate to visit the projects, himself.

But there was a beautiful sequent to the project. Because of our insistence that volunteers bring our own food to spare the villagers the onus of providing us our meals, the volunteers brought their own supplies. And they hardly partook of the food prepared by the village folks.

We declined the invitation by the barangay captain to take lunch with him. We had marched off almost a kilometer when a villager approached us – the Social Welfare Officer Luz Sanchez, a PC lieutenant and myself to return to the village to rescue the barangay captain from embarrassment. He had prepared a sumptuous meal for us. And it would have embarrassed him before the entire village if we did not eat his prepared food.

But if there was something which Montelibano really was for – it was the VERTA. This was the educational television station at the UNO-R put up by then Bacolod Bishop Antonio Y. Fortich. Junior went all out for it. He distributed television sets to the barangays. And he went out of his way to have some of these put up in corner sari-sari stores.

But, once, while taking a swig of soft drinks, he noticed a farmer hauling tuba to the corner store. But, after he had been paid, the old man put up several pesos for beer yes, San Miguel Beer. I guess we have to review our involvement with VERTA, was how Montelibano put it. It seems that education also taught the audience of the countrysides how to have the taste for more expensive goods rather than the more accessible products which they already were producing. Well, as I had earlier said, there are something which characterized Montelibano's governance. But these are things that can wait for me to complete what I have started – the book on Gov. Montelibano.*

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