The Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) said the Duterte administration should not make haste in relocating squatter families as it embarks on an ambitious project to rehabilitate Manila Bay.
In a telephone interview, Fernando Hicap, national chairman of Pamalakaya, said relocating squatter families should be carefully planned so as not to waste government resources.
A former Anakpawis Party-list congressman, Hicap said fishermen living along the coast of Manila Bay will be severely affected by the plan to relocate squatter residents.
The official was reacting to the plan of the government to relocate around 300,000 squatter families to pave the way for the cleanup of Manila Bay.
The massive rehabilitation will affect residential, commercial and other establishments along a 194-kilometer coastline from Cavite to Bataan; a total of 128 local government units in eight provinces in Central and Southern Luzon and the National Capital Region.
“If they will relocate informal settlers away from their place of work, where there is no job, no water or electricity, it will be a waste. They will only go back to where they used to live,” Hicap said.
According to Hicap, most of the 300,000 squatter families targeted for relocation as part of the Manila Bay rehabilitation are fishermen and communities who depend on fishing.
“If they want to relocate fishermen and their families, the relocation site should be an on-site or in-city relocation,” he said.
Hicap said that if the Duterte administration is serious in rehabilitating Manila Bay, it should first address the garbage problem, move away landfills from rivers and creeks; prevent the indiscriminate dumping of toxic wastewater by industries in rivers and river tributaries that lead out to Manila Bay, stop destructive development projects such as those that would involve land reclamation or dump-and-fill.
Hicap also rejected the justification that the relocation of squatters is intended to address the indiscriminate dumping of garbage along Manila Bay, saying the poor solid waste management in many areas should not be blamed on informal settlers alone.
“The rehabilitation of Manila Bay should not be a reason for the massive relocation of informal settler families to pave the way for multibillion-peso development projects and land reclamation activities that will only cause further destruction of our coastal and marine environment,” he said
Image credits: Nonie Reyes