An official of Department of Agrarian Reform in Bacolod City died in Barotac Viejo town in Iloilo province, while a member of the City’s Legal Office Enforcement Unit was shot and killed at the downtown area yesterday.

Eduardo Balino, 54, of Brgy. Anoring in Sara town, Iloilo province, and the officer-in-charge of DAR Bacolod reportedly rode a taxi at Jaro District in Iloilo City at about 6 a.m. and asked the driver to bring him to Sara town.

Driver Roger Gallero of the Light of Glory Lines Taxi told Aksyon Radyo-Iloilo that while they were travelling the highway of Barotac Viejo, Balino, who was sitting beside the driver, grabbed the steering wheel and tried to crash the cab into a speeding bus.

Two policemen were injured in a gunbattle with suspected New People’s Army men in the hinterlands of Escalante City, while four detachments were simultaneously harassed and fired at by rebels Sunday in Isabela, Negros Occidental, and in Guihulngan, Negros Oriental.

The military, however, said this could be an attempt of the rebels to project that they are still strong and a force to reckon with.

Brushing these aside as incidents of harassment, Col. Francisco Patrimonio, 303rd Infantry Brigade commander, yesterday said the NPA merely wants to exaggerate their capability to hit government installations. He said the firing at Libas detachment in Isabela Sunday night, was done by rebels who had positioned themselves far away from the military outpost.

The internationally-awarded hydraulic ram pump perfected by a Bacolod-based non government organization is now in Nepal.

Auke Idzenga, head of the Technical Department, and chairperson of Management Team of the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation in Barangay Mansilingan, Bacolod City, yesterday said he and Roy Inocencio successfully installed a pilot ram pump in the District of Dhading, Nepal, about three hours away from Kathmandu from May 15 to June 5.

The installation is part of a complete technology transfer between AIDFI and the Centre for Rural Technology, Nepal (CRT/N), Idzenga said.