Tuesday, January 08, 2008 Foreign group donates P1.4M for relocation site
AT least 185 urban poor families are waiting for the Cebu City Government to fulfill a promise to fix their drainage two years after most of them lost their homes to a Pier 6 demolition in 2005.
Through the intervention of the Fellowship for Organizing Endeavors (Forge), P1.4 million was given by Latin American housing funding institution Selavip last December for the relocation site’s development.
But Forge’s Charmae Pyl Nercua, City Division for the Welfare of the Urban Poor (DWUP) consultant, said the amount was just half of what they requested.
In an interview, she said she met City Councilor Gerardo Carillo last November, and was given the assurance that the City will use its calamity funds for the drainage, which required at least P800,000 in appropriation.
Construction
That was after Typhoon Lando destroyed the houses of three indigent families.
Selavip, Nercua said, funded the construction of ripraps and a road, but not the drainage project.
The P800,000, though, was not included in the P16.404 million that the City Council set aside from the calamity fund as assistance to various barangays hit by calamities like dengue incidents and Lando last December.
The amount includes P4.931 million to rehabilitate damaged roads.
Drainage
Nercua said Carillo promised to include the amount in the 2008 annual budget or in this year’s supplemental budgets.
“Councilor Carillo already made a commitment. A program of works and estimates has already been prepared. They (City Government) will handle the drainage. What we did was to inform the City of the need,” she said.
Nercua said the Laguerta relocation site was not even included in the “unlivable” urban poor relocation sites she reported to the City Council in September last year.
During that time, the City Council proposed to sell the “unlivable” and undeveloped properties to private developers just so the City can recover a portion of its investments and use the money for other lot purchases.
Socialized program
Some P100 million worth of undeveloped land in hilly areas in five barangays intended for Cebu City’s urban poor socialized housing program remain idle because they are considered “unlivable” 10 years after the lots were bought in 1997 to 2000.
Nercua said that when 112 families from Pier 6 and five families from Barangay Carreta joined 58 more families in Laguerta in 2005, there was no electricity and water.
The site, previously owned by the Villalon family, was bought during the administration of former mayor Alvin Garcia.
And though there are artesian wells and electricity in the place now, a road, drainage, and ripraps to stabilize the soil in landslide-prone Laguerta have yet to be constructed.
Development
Also, Nercua said Taft Property, Inc. has not yet presented before the Local Housing Board (LHB) its land development proposal for the Kapasar site in Tak-an, Barangay Budlaan.
Not one of the 58,712 urban poor families have resettled in the site because the area was considered “unlivable”—forested, rocky or at least 30 degrees steep.
The real estate firm is the first private developer to respond to the City Council’s proposal for the private sector to help develop the relocation sites. (RHM)
