Bulacan city won’t take in more Metro Manila squatters

MANILA, Philippines—After taking in 750,000 informal settlers—around half uprooted from danger zones in Metro Manila—the City of San Jose del Monte in Bulacan province will no longer accommodate more relocatees from the metropolis.

Mayor Reynaldo San Pedro has announced that the city council was drafting a 10-year moratorium on accepting more informal settlers from the National Capital Region so that the city government would have more resources to provide services to the transferees.

According to him, the city used to have just 450,000 resettled squatters. But the total shot up to 750,000 when Metro Manila began relocating informal settlers between 2000 and 2013.

He said that San Jose Heights in Barangay (village) Muzon, San Jose del Monte City, would be the last community to serve as a resettlement area for Metro Manila squatters. San Jose Heights is a subdivision built and opened in August 2013.

On Friday, which is celebrated as Republic Day in Bulacan province, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas turned over P40-million worth of livelihood projects for the resettled squatters.

“We are saddened by the city government’s decision because San Jose del Monte has been the ideal place for people who were displaced from Metro Manila danger zones. The relocation site is well developed, is near Metro Manila, and has infrastructure to serve the resettled families,” said Chito Cruz, general manager of the National Housing Authority (NHA).

“But we understand that it has resettled so many people,” he added.

He said the NHA was now studying whether Rizal province and the towns of Pandi and Norzagaray in Bulacan were ready to receive the next batch of informal settlers from the metropolis.

At present, Pandi and Bustos oversee resettlement sites for Bulacan’s informal settlers.

San Jose Heights, which serves close to 3,000 families, is the sixth largest community of resettled families from Metro Manila.

The national government has been relocating squatter families to Bulacan since the 1970s, leading to the development of Liberty Farm, Pabahay 2000, Towerville, Gaya-gaya and San Jose Heights.

Roxas said on Friday that more than 110,000 informal settlers from Metro Manila had been brought to different housing and relocation sites in San Jose del Monte for years but with no corresponding means of livelihood.

These families are now recipients of a livelihood training project that will be undertaken at a training facility being built in Barangay Minuyan in the city, San Pedro said.

Roxas also assured the group of Nenita Salbadero, one of the informal settlers relocated in San Jose Heights, that their new homes would have power and water services.

“We are not okay. We have lived in the new houses for two years without power and water so we wrote the secretary to ask for his help,” Salbadero said.

Roxas was the guest speaker at the Barasoain Church in Malolos City for the celebration of the 116th anniversary of the First Philippine Republic.