The Philippine Online Chronicles

Everyday in Metro Manila we have numerous examples of the best and worst practices of government. In Navotas, young policemen beat up poor women old enough to be their grandmothers. The women wouldn’t end a barricade they had formed to protect their homes against actions of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) which the women believed were illegal. Lawyers and other government offices agree with the women.

Meanwhile, in Baseco, Manila Mayor Fred Lim and Barangay Captain Cristo Hispano have agreed to resettle 300 fire victim families in the most humane and efficient way possible.

Cora Geducos, 61, was one of the women beaten by police in Navotas along the R10 road that runs along Manila Bay. “He held his shield against my face,” she says of the young policeman who clubbed her, “then he bent down and hit my legs and feet with his club.” She showed me her bandaged toe and the lesions on her arms. “I didn’t think they would do that to us. We were just protecting our homes and our rights as human beings. I feel very sad about what happened. It hurts to think they would do that to old women like myself.”

Sixteen other women showed their wounds, including 44-year-old Angelita Villaruel, Virginia Cantellas, Daisy Jalbuena, and Emma Villaruel. Not all wished to give their ages. Fr. Robert Reyes then had a prayer service in the street at which the men and women of the barricade laughed and cried, hugged one another, listened to the Scripture, prayed, and sang the “Ama Namin”, which has become the anthem of the oppressed ever since it was sung in the giant rallies that supported Cory before and after the Snap Election of 1986. The women were also water cannoned from a distance of a few feet. The use of water cannons is illegal in such evictions. Water cannons on women!

Usually after big fires, government takes steps to keep the poor from returning to the land they occupied, because it believes it has better use for the land. The fire victims must look for land elsewhere. Mayor Lim, the Barangay Captain, the local people’s organization, KABALIKAT, and architects of the Mapua School of Architecture have agreed on something more useful.

They, too, will not allow people to return to the land they occupied, but only until the land has been surveyed and subdivided into lots, then they can return. The new settlement will have straight roads for ambulance and fire engine access. Access is the big problem in most slum fires. The recent fire spread because fire trucks couldn’t get near it. Second, the mayor and others will ask the Mapua School of Architecture to survey and plan the settlement in consultation with the people. Third, the re-structured area will be the model for the other 6,000 families living in barong-barongs in Baseco. Because the soil is very “risky” and liable to liquefaction in case of an earthquake, houses will be limited to one storey. The people involved will work with neighborhood groups including Muslim organizations and Fr. Cris Sabili and the St. Hannibal Empowerment Center (SHEC).

The area has been bulldozed, and now looks like an ancient battlefield excavated after the ages. Individual men and women wander about on it lost in their thoughts. The setting sun sends long shadows of playing children across the scorched ground. The people are content as they line up for relief goods; they don’t have to worry about relocation. That is, all the people except the parents of a little girl who died in the fire.

In Navotas, the people live on land designated for widening of the R10. They agree to move and they qualify in all ways for the relocation ordered in the Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992. If they receive relocation, they will move. DPWH says it asked the National Housing Authority and other agencies to provide resettlement, and when they couldn’t do so, DPWH now claims they had done all that was required and went ahead in another questionable way to plan the eviction. Instead of a home, it offered P21,000 to families to move, an alternative not mentioned in the law.

There is a greater willingness now even among the most influential government agencies to ignore the housing and resettlement laws. Government can deal kindly or cruelly with the poor, but there are serious consequences in this life and the next.

-Commentary  Philippine Daily Inquirer

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

Photos: John Francis Lagman.