She Said Development

By Dinah S. Ventura

I have often been struck by the sight of shanty towns thriving almost within spitting distance of many government offices in Quezon City. If you take a shortcut from Edsa into NIA Road, for example, you will pass by a long stretch where makeshift stalls hawking food and other goods sit beside the barangay hall, along which people wander around and socialize as if it were a provincial fiesta, and little kids play unsupervised along the street, so that one has to drive through the melee with utmost care.

Beyond these stalls and clusters of people, one will glimpse the shadowed inner pathways of the place they call home.

As you drive further on, you will see a few makeshift “tents” and wooden carts bearing some poor souls, perhaps someone lying on a soiled blanket in the sidewalk or on the road’s island, or naked little babies sitting squat on the ground.

Informal settlers have long been a bane in Metro Manila. Many times, we, citizens, only remember them when we hear of fires razing squatter areas, or floods sweeping through these communities, or violence erupting from demolition efforts. Oh, and who can forget them during election time? It is widely believed that the added voting mass of squatter colonies is the reason they have not been relocated and the land they have simply occupied cleared.

As Neal H. Cruz of the Philippine Daily Inquirer wrote in his column (As I See It) on Oct. 13, 2011: “It is no secret that it is the councilors and barangay officials who make the squatting problem worse. It is the barangay that is supposed to be the first line of defense against the entry of new squatters. But it is the barangay officials and the councilors themselves who bring in more squatters during election time so that they will vote for them. No barangay official or councilor will voluntarily eject squatters because that would mean less votes for them, higher realty taxes or not.”

Quezon City, for all its wealth, the columnist added, has not developed as much as neighboring cities because of alleged graft and corruption among local officials. Instead of putting the people’s taxes to good use, he further said, these are spent on such things as token structures that serve no real purpose but advertise the officials’ names.

It has only been in the last few years when QC residents have seen some significant developments, but these have come in the form of private sector projects such as the ones undertaken by Ayala Land Inc.

The rise of Trinoma in North Edsa is the beginning of bigger and better plans for that part of the city. According to recent AFP News, the local property giant has disclosed plans to “spend P64 billion ($1.5 billion) over the next 15 years to develop a former squatter colony in a suburb of the capital.”

The project will be a joint venture between Ayala and the government’s National Housing Authority, which owns the 29-hectare (72-acre) property. The report adds that Ayala, “will develop the area while the housing authority will retain the real estate.”

The first phase will take four years and cost about P12 billion.

The question is, what will happen to the rest of the residents of the squatter area “where some 6,000 families lived in squalor?” It is said that the area for the first phase has already been cleared of informal settlers — with a lot of resistance, one might add.

Developments like this is welcomed by residents of the city. For a long time now, the largest city of Metro Manila has progressed so slowly that even now, there seems to be no particular area one can call its central business district.

The squatter problem is not the only problem. Things like better maintenance of roads, garbage disposal, better street lighting and such could still be improved. Taxpayers would like to see their money being spent wisely rather than the same old useless structures that only adds to the sometimes confusing jumble of detritus around.