Robredo is ‘Vice Ganda’ in surprise visit to Tondo relocation site

Vice President Leni Robredo checks out a resettlement area in Tondo, Manila on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017. (Photo by NIKKO DIZON/Philippine Daily Inquirer)

In a Tondo community, Leni Robredo is “Vice Ganda.”

Vice President Robredo visited a rundown tenement in Barangay 105, along Road 10, in Tondo on Thursday, and was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd as she took a look into their tough living conditions.

“Ang ganda pala ni Vice! (Wow, Vice is beautiful!),” the Inquirer heard some women exclaim while they took photos of Robredo with their camera phones as she went from room to room at the tenement and spoke with residents.

Others called Robredo “Vice Ganda,” the screen name of a popular gay comedian.

Robredo went around Building 29 where more than 2,000 families live in squalid conditions, save for the occasional  television, a small washing machine.  Babies, children and the elderly crowded the rooms, but nearly everyone had mobile phones.

It is just one of the 32 buildings in a relocation site called Happy Land, originally envisioned as a temporary housing for informal settlers in Balut, Tondo, in 1994 but many have remained. Over time, their extended families have stayed with them as well.

Children walked on the dirty and muddy ground barefoot, and the overpowering stench of garbage has become a part of their lives.

Robredo has had a grueling week marked by the so-called #LeniLeaks and being disinvited by Malacañang from President Duterte’s first vin d’honneur.

But she repeatedly said she wanted to focus on what her office could do for the people who needed the government’s help the most, which was why she found herself in Tondo on Thursday.

She met with the village officials and the volunteers of Project Pearls, which offers frontline, day-to-day assistance to the residents, like a daily feeding program for nearly 300 school children.

The Office of the Vice President (OVP), through its Angat Buhay poverty alleviation program, will partner with Project Pearls by looking for more private nongovernment organizations that could extend help to the residents of Happy Land.

Robredo learned from the women at Building 29 that they pay P70 for a drum of water they use for taking a bath and doing the laundry. This does not include drinking water.

She also noticed a large hole on the roof of Building 29. “What happens when it rains?” Robredo asked the residents, who replied simply that they get wet.

“Every day, they buy their water. I will ask Maynilad if they could find a permanent solution. And since the NHA (National Housing Authority) owns the lot here, I will propose that the land be awarded to them so that they could have permanent dwellings,” Robredo said./rga