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Friday, July 28, 2006
Roperos: Reclamation projects
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
Not very long ago, about thirty families living on a piece of property adjoining the seashore in my hometown had to leave the area when they lost their case before the Regional Trial Court in Toledo City.
The owner had wanted to use the property for a commercial project. But the place was squatted on, and the squatters went to court when they were asked to vacate it. They lost. But the case is typical in many of our towns and cities today.
With steadily increasing population and people concentrating in areas that could offer them livelihood, it is only natural that they should congregate in towns and cities.
It does not matter if they have to live in makeshift homes on sites they do not own. It does not matter if governments of towns and cities would suffer untold headaches trying to contain their unwarranted influx.
My point is that this has become a big national problem and getting bigger everyday as the country’s population balloons in inverse proportion to the increase in number of jobs and employment opportunities.
With the poverty level rising and families living below the poverty line increasing, pressure for more areas to build homes on, heightens. On top of it, cities and towns, with rising population, are utilizing public lands for development.
And here’s the rub. Towns and cities with no more appropriate areas for expansion have turned to reclaiming their foreshore for both public and commercial use.
I think no one needs an example to understand what I mean. Cebu City alone has the north reclamation project—thanks to the foresight of the late Serging Osmeña---and the South Reclamation Project (SRP), thanks to incumbent Mayor Tommy Osmeña who, I understand, is suffering a giant-sized headache over how to make the SRP commercially viable.
I think that politics is the one that is slowing down the project’s development, or a new industrial and residential landscape might have already risen on it.
But my point is that the Arroyo government may have recognized the importance of reclaiming foreshore areas to meet imperatives of demography.
I learned that the public estates office that is tasked to take care of government properties, especially government share from reclaimed areas, has been upgraded. It is now called, I think, Philippine Reclamation Authority or PRA.
Where before reclamation projects were subject to presidential approval, this power to approve has been reportedly delegated to the PRA. Consequently, all reclamation projects, past and present, must register with it.
The newly constituted PRA board, as I expected, smacks of political regional representation.
For the Visayas, there’s Bert Emphasis, who is closely identified with Lakas-NUCD and Speaker Jose de Venecia. He worked with my late brother, Cesar, in the defunct National Manpower and Youth Council.
But that is not really of any consequence. The point is that the President, in giving the PRA importance, may have recognized the imperatives of anticipating future increase in our population, and the need to prepare potential areas for housing the poor and homeless.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 28, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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