Land banking for informal settlers urged

CITY councilor Joshua Alim, chairman of the SP committee on urban poor, is urging city mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog to indulge in land banking and assure relocation sites for the city’s burgeoning landless urban poor and informal settlers.

Alim said the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has assured an initial P50 million for the construction of houses for the informal settlers under its pro-poor core shelter program provided the city government offers a land counterpart for the relocation site.

The city will have to buy at least 10 hectares of land for the increasing number of landless urban poor families with no houses of their own.

The banked land will be developed as a decent housing community for the informal settler families with the national and local governments jointly providing and assisting their housing needs.

The City Government is currently several housing communities for informal settlers aside from its onsite development programs for landless informal settlers in the site.

Among the housing showcases are the Sooc relocation sites in Sooc Mandurriao and Sooc Arevalo, Uswag Subdivision in Barangay San Isidro, Jaro, relocation site in Bitoon, Jaro and the River Plains Subdivision Phase I in Barangay Lanit and Camalig in Jaro district.