City ordered to pay 5 evicted residents

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu City government is willing to comply with the order of the Regional Trial Court directing it to pay five former residents of the city-owned lots whose houses were demolished 12 years ago.

Councilor Alvin Dizon, chairman of the City Council committee on housing and member of the Local Housing Board, brought up the matter before the council, which did not raise any objection.

Dizon said the city is willing to grant financial assistance to Cornelio Romeo, Angelita Montes, Aproniano Alcoseba, Elsa Mantus and Visminda Castañares after RTC Executive Judge Meinrado Paredes ordered the city to give P5,000 to each of them.

The Squatters Prevention Encroachment and Elimination Division (SPEED) – then headed by Antonio Dotillos – was the subject of a case filed by the five persons for destroying their houses along Natalio Bacalso Avenue.

But Paredes dismissed the case after the defendants were able to prove that the lots occupied by the complainants are owned by the city.

Dotillos and the other defendants proved that they had offered relocation to the affected families, but the complainants insisted to stay in the place, prompting the SPEED personnel to demolish their houses in 1998.

“In the case at bar the plaintiffs suffered pecuniary losses when their houses were demolished, but they have no right to recover because they were squatting on government property. They were not tenants who had the right to be there,” the court ruling reads.

According to Paredes, there is no sufficient factual basis to award moral damages, saying the “plaintiffs may have experienced wounded feelings or social humiliations but they can blame nobody, but themselves.”

“Had they agreed to be relocated, like the others who were similarly situated, they would not have suffered social humiliation or similar injury,” the court ruling added.

But Dizon said the city will still help the affected families.   (FREEMAN NEWS)