QC mayor to charge village officials tolerating squatting

MANILA, Philippines—The Quezon City barangay (village) officials who will allow squatters to build new colonies in their community faces prosecution, according to the city’s top executive.

Mayor Herbert Bautista issued the warning in a statement, to express his seriousness about ending squatting and signal to village officials he would take concrete steps to stop illegal settlements in the city.

“We will not hesitate to prosecute local officials who fail to curtail the proliferation and further increase of informal settlements in their respective areas,” Bautista said.

Bautista said that makeshift dwellings on waterways and along riverbanks contributed to the flooding, which contaminated water.

He added that apart from a case to be filed in court, the barangay officials would be removed from their position through a memorandum issued by the Department of Interior and Local Government, MC-2011-017.

He further said local government officials had been armed by the DILG circular to suspend erring village officials.

“We have been given the teeth to discipline, suspend and remove officials by the DILG,’’ Bautista said.

He said that the influx of informal settlers in Quezon City would also add to the problems of the city government.

Bautista said that allowing migrants from the provinces to build their shanties along waterways would expose them to dirty surroundings, with more poor children getting sick, with more indigent families dying from flood-causing mudslides and collapsing structures, and would amount to creating more problems for the city government.

The city government, he said, had already resettled more than 232,000 families since 2010.