“A lot of our pigs were immunized against hog cholera yet almost all of them died so I doubt that it was only hog cholera that caused their deaths,” San Enrique Mayor Jilson Tubillara said on Monday, June 12.
Almost the entire pig population in San Enrique town in Negros Occidental have been wiped out by hog diseases, the Provincial Veterinary Office (PVO) reported.
The pig deaths in San Enrique were 2,671 or 99.22 percent of the town’s former total pig
population of 2,692, the PVO reported.
Initial laboratory tests conducted by the PVO showed that the San Enrique pigs were hit with hog cholera, Tubillara said.
Most of the San Enrique pigs were insured against ASF so the hog raisers could not claim payments since they were not found positive for the virus, the mayor said.
The pig population in his town has not been replenished because there is a period that has to be observed before that can be done, he added.
Tubillara said although they have funds to aid the hog raisers it is not enough since it is only P2 million.
They had initially planned to give P3,000 to P5,000 to each hog raiser but there were more that applied for aid so they are determining who the real victims are, Tubillara said.
Tubillara said they cannot declare a state of calamity because according to the law 15 percent of all livelihood in the town must be affected, which is not the case in San Enrique.
San Enrique residents have other livelihoods, including fishing, he said.
Tubillara said an initial state of calamity declared by the San Enrique Sangguniang Bayan is not valid because it did not have the recommendation of the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council, which is required.
However, even without a declaration of a state of calamity they already decided to aid the affected hog raisers, he said.
There are no big piggeries in San Enrique, they all backyard raisers who have been affected, he added.*