President Benigno Aquino III has extended for another two or three months a weeklong review of the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (Apeco), an official of the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) said on Friday.
Meeting the protesters’ demands halfway, President Aquino on Monday ordered a review of the country’s first economic hub rising at the edge of the Pacific but rejected calls that he cut off funding and scrap the project altogether.
Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, in a dialogue with peasants on an 18-day march to Malacañang to protest a rising economic zone in Aurora, on Monday called for an “examination of conscience” to determine if Sen. Edgardo Angara’s vision of development would benefit the impoverished region.
With only about 150 kilometers left in their journey, more than 100 farmers, fishermen and indigenous peoples who have been marching from Casiguran, Aurora, since Nov. 24, are hoping to meet President Benigno Aquino to plead for his help to save their land and livelihood from an economic zone.
The Senate on Wednesday night rejected Sen. Sergio Osmeña III’s proposal to reduce to P3.5 million the P353-million budget of the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (Apeco) for 2013.
Senator Edgardo Angara denied the allegations by Senator Sergio Osmeña III that the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (Apeco) in Casiguran, Aurora, was a waste of P2 billion of the government’s money.
Sen. Sergio Osmeña III on Tuesday vowed to block the P353-million budget next year for the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (Apeco), saying Sen. Edgardo Angara’s pet project has “absolutely no chance of succeeding in 50 years” and that the P2 billion spent for it had been wasted.
In a statement, peasants of Casiguran in Aurora on an 18-day march are demanding that:
A Church-backed group of 120 peasants has mounted a 350-kilometer march to press demands that President Aquino review a 12,000-hectare economic zone rising in the remote coastal town of Casiguran in Aurora province that they say will drive them out of their homes and keep them impoverished.
