Tim Orbos
The Department of Transportation (DOTr) has committed to provide housing for 150 families to be affected by the construction of the Southwest Integrated Terminal Project in Paranaque City, the Presidential Commission on Urban Poor (PCUP) said on Wednesday.
Jon Jamora, PCUP general counsel, said that DOTr Usec. Tim Orbos and Asec. Mark de Leon made the commitment in a continuation of the department’s working partnership with the commission.
The partnership also includes a P1 billion social preparation fund for one hundred thousand urban poor families affected by the SouthRail project from Tutuban to Bicol, he disclosed.
“We thank them for their support of President Rodrigo Duterte’s pronouncement of ‘No demolition without relocation’,” Jamora said in a statement as the PCUP greenlighted the project’s clearing operations during a predemolition conference.
The DOTr’s commitment was also a testament of the Duterte administration’s promise that no poor families should be left without homes as the country enters its “golden age of infrastructure,” Jamora said.
“We are hopeful of the same level of compliance for urban poor housing on other pending infrastructure projects, such as MRT-7, National Housing Authority’s (NHA) Vertis North, NLEX expansion, and C-6, which involve more than twenty thousand of families,” he added.
The mandatory housing policy for affected urban poor families was the flagship program of former PCUP chairman Terry Ridon, Jamora noted.
Ridon, a former lawmaker affiliated with Kabataan Partylist, was sacked by Malacañang last December due to “unnecessary junkets.”