QC mayor vows crackdown on slum syndicates for agitating informal settlers

Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista file photo

MANILA, Philippines — Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista blamed Monday’s violent clash between policemen and squatters along Agham Road to professional squatting syndicates who needlessly agitated residents by claiming their homes were up for demolition.

Bautista clarified that the city government did not order any demolition of shanties on Monday along Agham Road in Sitio (sub village) San Roque, Barangay (village) Bagong Pagasa.  He vowed to go after the leaders of the syndicate responsible for the melee.

“Most of the residents who availed of the relocation program were voluntarily demolishing their shanties when a group infiltrated the area and stirred up other residents to try to stop the others from moving,” the mayor told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, adding that the members of the syndicate had injected the fear of losing their homes in the residents who barricaded the area and took up arms.

He said that he received an intelligence report that the syndicate was also funding efforts to block the movement of the 29-hectare Ayala Lands Inc (ALI) property residents, most of whom had opted to go for their relocation to Montalban, Rizal.

Out of 10,000 families in the area, Bautista said, some 8,000 have already availed of homes at the relocation site. The mayor said that the families who agreed to move found the offer reasonable as they would only pay P200 monthly in 25 years to get their own house and lots.

“Members of the syndicate are blocking the relocation of the remaining 2,000 families because they would lose their source of income,” he told the Inquirer, explaining that the syndicate usually asked residents to pay them P1,000 purportedly to support its effort in preventing their eviction from the ALI-owned property.

He added that the syndicate has also been collecting money for illegal water and electrical connections. “If they allow all families in the area to relocate, they stand to lose a lot of money,” he said.

On Monday, he said, 500 of the 2,000 remaining families were preparing to move to their proposed relocation site in San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan when the members of the syndicate stepped in and stirred up the other informal settlers.

The syndicate, Bautista said, apparently capitalized on the lapse of the 40-day notice given to residents in the area for them to voluntarily demolish their shanties to agitate them, despite the usual automatic extension of the period for voluntary demolition.

He told the Inquirer that the 1,500 families who refuse to budge from the site earn money by renting their homes out to bed spacers.

The 29-hectare property was previously owned by the National Housing Authority (NHA).  ALI won the bidding for the development of a portion of the Quezon City Central Business District under a public-private partnership arrangement. The NHA allocated the proceeds of the sale to funding the relocation of informal settlers.

Bautista cited the economic gains of pushing for the development by the ALI of the site. He said that the development, aside from creating more jobs, would also generate revenue that would fund the city government’s programs, particularly in education, to benefit residents.

“Compared to the gains that we can get out of this, can we allow ourselves to be held hostage by these professional squatter syndicates?” he said.

Bautista vowed a crackdown on the leaders of the syndicate, who, he said, have been identified.