Expressway almost complete, but farmers yet to be paid

The 9-kilometer stretch of the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEx) in this eastern Pangasinan town is about 75 percent complete, but none of the farmers whose lands were used for the highway has received full payments for their property, a project consultant said.

“Nobody has been paid yet in Pangasinan,” Roberto Tamondong, an independent consultant of the TPLEx, told the Inquirer by phone last week.

Mayor Ricardo Revita said the problem in the payment of the right-of-way cropped up because documents on land ownership were not ready. The lands were expropriated and the court would settle how much the farmers would be paid, he said.

The area used to be a hacienda (estate) and some of the land titles are in the names of dead residents. He said some lands are tilled by relatives of the dead owners and they have to agree who they would assign as representatives of their families in transactions with the government, he said.

John Alimorong, municipal planning and development coordinator, said an appraisal committee composed of provincial and municipal assessors and a representative from the Bureau of Internal Revenue, is determining the cost of the lands where the expressway passes through.

The expressway covers around 54 hectares of rice land, but Revita said he did not know how many farmers would be displaced.

The 9-km stretch of the expressway in this town is being built by D.M. Consunji Inc. (DMCI).

Tamondong said the farmers also asked the Department of Public Works and Highways to build a bridge, similar to the Candaba viaduct in Pampanga, to avoid flooding their farms. But he said this would entail a bigger budget.

“The proponent assured [the farmers] that the eastern side of the expressway would not be affected by floods because of the new road because there are enough [box culverts] to drain the water. Besides, building a bridge would not be justified because there is no river [in the area], but agricultural land,” he said.

In April last year, residents of Pangaoan village here put up a human barricade at the TPLEx site to protest the construction of a three-meter high expressway, which they said would flood their village and erase it from the town’s map.

“Instead of the highway, we are asking the government to construct a viaduct similar to the one in Pampanga, as the expressway will dam water and drown the village during the rainy season,” Pangaoan village chief Renato Oril said.

But Oril said residents, in a consultation held earlier, agreed to the project as long as reinforced concrete pipes are laid out to serve as waterways to avoid flooding their farms.