Parañaque reclamation talks bring up old land claims

A fisherfolk group calling itself “the last claimants” to a portion of the 65-hectare Freedom Island on Manila Bay has come forward amid talks of a new reclamation project in Parañaque City.

The Manila Bay United Fisherfolk and Urban Poor Organization maintained that the government, through the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA), owes it at least 15 hectares on Freedom Island that were supposed to be developed for low-cost housing under a 1992 agreement.

The group, led by its president Pedro Litada, attended the public consultation held by City Hall on Tuesday on the proposal from SM Land Inc. to reclaim a portion of Manila Bay.

Litada based the claims on a March 1992 agreement between the Public Estate Authority (precursor of the PRA) and the group, then called Gabay ng Gintong Layunin (GGL), representing around 3,500 families.

The agreement stated that 15 hectares of Freedom Island would be developed into a socialized housing project called “Fishermen’s Village,” complete with concrete roads, schools and a church.

The agreement presented by Litada was written in Filipino and bore the signatures of then PEA chair Eduardo Zialcita and members of the GGL executive committee, with the heads of local churches and civic organizations also signing as witnesses.

In 1989, informal settlers were removed from barangays Tambo and Baclaran, and Freedom Island (locally known as Pulo) was made into a staging area for the uprooted residents pending the selection of a permanent resettlement site.

In 1995, the House of Representatives passed a resolution recommending 25 hectares of the island for socialized housing, a move also backed by the Parañaque city council.

But Litada said Freedom Island residents were illegally evicted in 2000 by the PEA and private developer Amari Coastal Bay Development, despite a court order against demolitions in the area.

The residents filed criminal and civil complaints against the PRA and Amari’s private security forces, which are still pending in Parañaque courts and the Office of the Ombudsman, Litada said.

The PEA-Amari deal was eventually scrapped by the Supreme Court in 2002, but “harm was (already) done to the people of Freedom Island,” he said.

Sought for comment, PRA assistant general manager Joselito Gonzales confirmed the pending cases against his agency, but said the issues raised by Litada had become complicated—“nagpatong-patong na”—over the past 14 years.

Gonzales said the land that Litada’s group wanted is now within the Las Piñas-Parañaque Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area, a protected sanctuary declared in 2007 by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.