DAVAO CITY — Kidapawan City is not just celebrating their Timpupo Festival with the bountiful fruit harvest, they highlighted the occasion by hosting the first tribal mass wedding which legalized the union of 44 couples who have been living together for years.
On Saturday August 18, Mayor Joseph Evangelista sealed the union of 44 couples at the city’s gymnasium in a traditional wedding rite.
Garbed in the traditional Manobo and Bagobo wedding costumes the couple committed to love each other for better or for worse, the rite was in accordance with the IP culture, Evangelista officiated their union.
Evangelista said the IP mass wedding will be integrated into the city’s foundation anniversary celebration in honor of the IPs who were the original inhabitants of Kidapawan.
The union did not only benefit their children but the whole family as well, because they now have a legal document to show they are couple, which will paved the way for them to avail the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) or Republic Act (RA) 11310.
The recent institutionalization of the 4P’s program aims to provide financial aid to poor households that meet certain qualifications, to improve the health, nutrition and education aspect of their lives.
President Rodrigo Duterte signed the measure into law on April 17.
Datu Camilo Icdang, the deputy mayor for Kidapawan said these couples have been living together for a long time and have been blessed with children and grandchildren, but have no proof of legality of their marriage.
Icdang said the mass wedding will pave a way for the Indigenous Peoples (IP’s) in the hinterlands to avail government services that had been deprived to them of the national government.
The IPs have difficulties in availing the government 4P’s program as well as in getting the emergency Philhealth because of lack of documents such as the identification cards, marriage and birth certificates.
“We are happy that the city government has initiated this tribal mass wedding as part of the Timpupo Festival to give honor the tribes in Kidapawan,” Datu Icdang said.
There were old couples joined the mass wedding, Icdang explained that many failed to have their union solemnized in a tribal rights because their dowry system was strictly enforced as part of their tradition.
In the IP tradition, it’s a must to provide the dowry or gift as demanded by the parents of the woman before the wedding day, it comes in cash or in kind.-ezc/NewLine.ph
