‘CONDEMNED CONDO’
Residents of the Fort Bonifacio Tenement Building, a 51-year-old mass housing project in Taguig City, bang pots and pans in a noise barrage Friday protesting government plans to relocate them to Cavite, after the seven-story structure was declared unsafe. They defied an eviction notice that gave them up to that day to leave. AP
About 1,000 families living in a “condemned” 51-year-old building in Taguig City defied a government eviction order and staged a noise barrage Friday to protest plans to have them relocated to Cavite province.
Tenants of the Fort Bonifacio Tenement Building were given up to Friday to leave, but instead, they banged pots and pans and refused to vacate the seven-story structure which experts said had become a virtual death trap. An official of the National Housing Authority (NHA) said the building could collapse in the event of a major earthquake in Metro Manila.
Godson Escopete, a member of the group Anakbayan Taguig which has been helping the residents air their concerns to the NHA, said they were strongly opposed to the NHA’s plans to move them to a relocation site in Barangay Aguado in Trece Martires, Cavite.
“They were initially told that they will just be transferred to Barangay Tanyag (also in Taguig), but lately they received information that they will be moved to Cavite,” Escopete said, noting that almost all of the residents work in Metro Manila.
The NHA asked the residents to leave since the building had already been declared unsafe, but Escopete said a study by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which was conducted at the residents’ request, indicated that the structure would need only retrofitting.
Constructed in 1963, the building was one of the mass housing projects of then President Diosdado Macapagal for the urban poor. It has 700 studio-type units rented out to one or two families each. Despite the name, it is actually not part of today’s Fort Bonifacio but is on Sampaguita Street, Barangay Western Bicutan.
According to Escopete, the earliest residents paid only P14 for a month’s stay. Today, tenants pay P200 a month to the NHA, the amount not covering water and power bills, he said.
The current occupants were not denying the building’s deteriorating condition but were only asking the government to find other ways of providing them decent shelter without moving them to Cavite, Escopete said.
Reached for comment, the NHA chief for the National Capital Region said the residents were ordered to vacate the building because it could collapse in the next big earthquake.
“But they are still insisting that we conduct further tests or retrofit the building. What they do not understand is that whatever process we have to conduct, we still have to take them out of there,” Vic Balba, an engineer, explained.
Balba said his office was already coordinating with the DPWH to form a team that will help convince the residents to start packing. “Right now, we are asking them to move to Cavite, but they can always go back to other in-city relocation sites once we have these sites ready.”
He noted that a number of residents fearing for their safety had already agreed to the Cavite relocation.