Can the gov't really stop professional squatters?

Everyday we get different kinds of news, be it bad or good. What I really do look into is a kind of news that has a wide impact on our society and our country in general. Apparently a news report buried deep inside a another local daily yesterday caught my attention which was bannered, “GMA Wants Professional Squatting Stopped!” This report showed that the President had already ordered the immediate stoppage of professional squatting in the country to ensure that only the legitimate informal settler would benefit from the government’s housing programs.

This report tells us that many of our wily professional squatters who have already made a business out of private and government properties are now getting deeper pockets in that they too have succeeded in getting into the housing programs of the government to the point that this was already brought to the attention of the President. In fact, they are the most vocal voices that complain to every move of the government.

This is also happening here in Metro Cebu and I encountered a lot of them many years ago when I was the Regional Development Council’s Infrastructure and Utilities (RDC-IUC) chairman. I was tasked to chair the Right of Way Committee where we opened up the New Road link that connected P. del Rosario St. to M. J. Cuenco Ave.

If you looked into the banks of the Guadalupe River from its source and the Lahug Creek, you will no longer see the 3-meter easement where no building, house or structure is supposed to be constructed, especially along our riverbanks and esteros. These squatters have virtually taken any available space that can be found, hence whenever we get big rains like what we’ve been getting all week, these illegal shanties or structures (many of them do not even have a toilet) are the first to be washed away into the riverbanks!

Now that the President has noticed this reality, perhaps we should ask the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to start bulldozing illegal structures, especially those that have even encroached on our major roads like in R. Landon, where the road suddenly narrows near the Police Headquarters or M. J. Cuenco Ave. at the mouth of Barangay Hippodromo and yes, on what used to be the F. Ramos St. extension.

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Forgive me for my persistence especially to our media friends in Cebu on how for many weeks they blew up the story about the brouhaha during the Ms. Cebu Tourism because of a misinformation from a cellphone company, which in my book could have been easily solved that very evening if the organizers made instant, but decisive decisions. Yet media played this story out as if the whole world fell upon the Burden family. In contrast, media here hasn’t done enough, nor even played up the issue that hounds every Cebuano motorist whenever we gas up, where we have to pay higher than premium prices over that of the rest of the Philippines.

We, as the old saying goes, “For evil to flourish, it is enough that good men do nothing!” Hence the evil that the Big 3 Oil companies have slapped on us Cebuanos continue because we have not shown how indignant we are about this situation. Perhaps Cebuanos find the situation so helpless that we cannot do anything anymore on this issue. When we are at a loss, what’s the next best thing to do if not to hold a protest rally? But even that is not even being discussed by anybody or any groups.

Perhaps a little lesson from American history ought to enlighten us to do something. I’m referring of course to the famous Boston Tea Party, which was an act of protest against the British Empire by the Colonies in America who protested the Tea Act by attacking ships in Boston harbor and dumping 342 chest of tea into the harbour. Of course, I submit that Americans could do without tea, while we Cebuanos just cannot dump nor destroy our oil resources, less the prices increase some more.

Hence our only hope is pinned on the suit filed by Gov. Gwen F. Garcia before the Department of Justice (DoJ’s) Task Force Oil Deregulation and the office of Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto who wanted to do an audit against the Big 3 Oil companies. Forget Congress as not a single member of Congress in Cebu is willing to haul the officials of the Big 3 Oil companies for a congressional hearing on this issue.

If there’s a little noise on this issue, it is that Provincial Board member Victor Maambong has asked Pilipinas Shell through a resolution not to increase the price of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). Outside of that, the only avenue left in the Legislative Branch is that promise by Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero to look into this matter and call for a Senate hearing when Congress resumes its session a few week from now.