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Villagers defy eviction threat

DAGUPAN CITY (Apr. 15) — Unfazed by recent eviction attempts by the city government, villagers of Sitio Bagong Barrio, Gueset here are braced to safeguard their stronghold.

Members of the militant Gabriela and Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay), both of local chapters here, now stand at every possible door step of the sitio, to block government officials from asking them to leave.

This, after a team from the local government, led by Rudy Fernandez, city executive assistant on special projects, Task Force on Recovery of Public Lands Chair Atty. Teofilo Gallang and Arch. Milbert Soriano, came at 10 am on April 8 to install a marker (muhon) at the area and inform the villagers to voluntarily start dismantling their shacks.

Disgruntled villagers confronted the team and prevented them from further marking the area, saying that they have an ongoing negotiation with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) where they claim to be the rightful owners of the 10.7–hectare sitio.

The team however argued that Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (PCUP) official Rufino Beltran had already identified 11 households who were earlier validated by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for relocation and cash compensation worth P50,000.

Joan Mackay, Gabriela chair, denied that the 11 households have acceded to the government’s order and that they stand with the rest of the villagers against the demolition.

The city government said the 11 households along a main road in the sitio are the ones directly affected by a road widening to give way to the construction of a fish plant. The government also identified only 36 families, as compared to the 290 families counted by the militant groups who will be affected by the plant construction.

Mackay said the Bangusville, a mass-housing project by government and Gawad Kalinga (GK) tie-up, lacks amenities to ensure standard living conditions for the relocatees and that the two agencies had refused to resettle all the affected villagers by mistakenly pointing most of them as rent-owners.

Bangus Processing Plant is a flagship project of Mayor Benjie Lim valued at P150 million, P50 million of the budget pledged by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2003, and the rest coming from stockholders. Lim regards bangus (milkfish) to be a major export product because of its famous texture and taste to cater to American and Japanese markets.

The 4,500 sq. meter fish plant facility will compose of a nature park, boat port, trading center and vehicle terminal. In the feasibility study, operation in first year would embark 491 metric tons net export earnings with total exportable value of 3,375 mt a year, P660 million in second year and P829 in third year. Products are in the form of frozen, marinated, smoked and canned, all deboned milkfish goods.

A technical report released by the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) indicated that a 4.5 ha of the contested land is the Urban Forestry project of CENRO established in 1980s that is planted with different forest trees serving as buffer zone in the locality. Mackay maintained that the villagers, who resisted eviction for two years now, will assert their right to land ownership as many of them have been settlers for 20-30 years now.

Their demand, rejected for many times by government agencies she said, had fermented the strength of the united villagers “in defense of basic rights”. # Jong de la Cruz for NORDIS

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