A dead end for rail dwellers?

Some 2,500 urban poor families in four barangays of Malabon City directly affected by the Manila-Clark Rapid Railway Project are preparing for relocation to Barangay Tanza in Navotas in April this year, hopefully to begin a new and better life.

What they do not expect is that if their shanties are finally torn down in three month’s time, they actually have nowhere to go.

The proposed resettlement site, sold to the city of Malabon at roughly P90 million, is a 12.5-hectare idle fishpond. Despite promising to fill up the property and develop it into "habitable condition" within a six-month period, the owners of the property has apparently failed on its commitment.

This, despite the city government having paid the P12.6 million down payment to a fishing company as early as eight months ago in April 2002.

The property remains a wide expanse of heavily silted brackish water where the muddy bottom has yet to be reclaimed from the sea.

"How could you, (Malabon) Mayor (Amado) Vicencio? Where are we to build our homes? This is all water?" representatives of the affected families asked when they first saw the site in an ocular visit in Tanza Tuesday last week.

Seeing the present condition of their supposed relocation site, they said they have become convinced their city officials led by Vicencio have been apparently misleading them all along. They said the local government has been telling them the site is ready to receive them with some 40 percent of the area already land-filled.

The acquisition of the property has also been questioned by the opposition bloc at the city council, which included Councilors Ma. Luisa "Chiqui" Roque-Villaruel, Edilberto Torres and Payapa Ona. The three earlier slapped Vicencio with charges of dishonesty, abuse of authority, misconduct in office and gross negligence in a complaint after Arthur Autea, Deputy Executive Secretary (OP), ordered him "to file a verified answer" to the allegations lodged by the opposition councilors.

Six urban poor leaders from Barangays Tinajeros, Acacia and Potrero led by Clarita Eneria, eight-year president of the Kapit Kamay sa Potrero (KKP), saw the site for the first time, accompanied by the opposition councilors and the prying media.

Eneria, who represents some 400 families, said they hoped to build anew at the site offered to them by the city of Malabon after living for years "along da riles."

Eneria claimed Malabon officials boasted to them in previous meetings that six to seven hectares of the Tanza site were already land-filled. But all they saw was water, hemmed in by cracked and crumbling earthen dikes.

The claim that the site was almost filled was contradicted by the dredger operator hired by the owners to fill up the fish pond.

"It will take a miracle. It’s impossible. At the rate we are going (dredging non-stop for eight hours daily) magbibilang tayo ng taon bago matambakan lang ang (fishpond). At saka hindi sapat ang makukuha natin dito sa ilog para itambak diyan," said Miguel Cielo, 29, dredger operator of contractor RSF, adding that his machine was only dredging up mud so far through a one-foot diameter pipe.

Missing the deadline?

In the memorandum of agreement signed in April 2 last year between Vicencio and the property owners, the land was supposed to be developed into a "good habitable condition" within six months, effectively from April 28 to Oct. 29, 2002. When the period expired, the owners requested another 90 days, to end in Jan. 30, 2003, to fill up the property. The STAR found out that RSF’s Cielo started dredging and filling the fishpond only last Dec. 10, 2002.

"JFC has so far failed to deliver on its commitment to fill up the area to the level of the dike as stipulated in the MOA," Torres said.

He added that it would still take some 10 to 15 years for a reclaimed or land-filled body of water to "settle down" and be stable enough and safe for actual habitation.

"The area is basically unsafe and pose danger to life and limb and property of the prospective settlers if they were to occupy the site, assuming that it is land-filled in three months," Torres said.

For his part, Vicencio accused the opposition bloc of delaying a legitimate project that would benefit the poor, saying there was nothing irregular in the purchase of the property, which in the first place had been approved by the city council.

In a faxed statement, Vicencio accused Villaroel and company of "intellectual dishonesty" for claiming that the purchase was not approved by the city council.

"Either the councilors are suffering from amnesia or are downright intellectually dishonest for making such a charge when they even introduced amendments to the MOA," the mayor said.

Vicencio dismissed the charges of the opposition as "early politicking." "I will no longer run in the coming elections but it seems that Torres and his gang are of the belief that they can boost their political stock by continuously smearing (sic) me," he said. The mayor vowed he will not be sidetracked by the minority’s filibustering in implementing his projects for the remaining period of his last term as city mayor.