Tomas Moron has lived in a makeshift home on the grounds of the Cebu International Convention Center for five years. He and his neighbors want the Mandaue city government to honor an agreement to donate to them the lots they occupied before a fire ravaged their homes in 2016.
On the grounds of the dilapidated Cebu International Convention Center (CICC), a group of makeshift homes were crammed so tightly that sunlight barely slipped through overlapping roof panels made of corrugated iron sheets.
The scrap wood and used tarpaulins that made up the walls offered little protection from the elements. It gets boiling hot during the dry season and cold when the rains come. The country is hit by an average of 20 typhoons each year.
“Strong winds can blow the roof of our homes,” Tomas Moron said in Cebuano.
Moron and his family have lived at the government property located in Mandaue’s city center for over five years. The city government moved them and their neighbors here after a fire in March 2016 ravaged their homes in barangays Mantuyong and Guizo.
By then the CICC, which was built for the 12th Asean Summit and the East Asia Summit in 2007, had fallen into ruin following twin disasters – an earthquake and “supertyphoon” Yolanda in 2013. The provincial government, which could not fund its repair, later sold the property to the city government of Mandaue.
Many of Moron’s neighbors have been allowed to return to their lots and rebuild their homes. But not his family. A few hundred residents who were told they would be relocated to another site were still fighting to return to their land.
“It’s all been empty promises…. Out of the 10 things they say, 15 are lies,” said Moron, visibly upset. He had joined the urban poor group Mantuyong Guizo Homeowners Urban Poor Association (MGHUPA) in the hope of improving his chances of returning home.
Moron could not understand why they were not all allowed to return to their village. The urban groups have harbored suspicions that the city government wanted to slowly convert their lots to commercial use.
Meanwhile, Moron watched life pass him by at the CICC. His wife died without seeing her wish to return home come true. He recently lost his job as a butcher at the wet market, but his two daughters found good jobs that allowed them to escape the CICC. He decided to stay at the convention center with his son, who has been supporting him.
In June 2019, another group of fire victims from Brgy. Tipolo arrived to set up their own makeshift homes on another corner of the CICC. They did a better job managing the space they were provided, putting some distance between their temporary shelters. They were also able to grow their own gardens on patches of soil where ornamental plants used to grow when the convention center entertained VIP guests.
Irine Indoc of Brgy. Tipolo has lived at the CICC for two years. She, her husband, and their two children get by with her income as a manicurist while her husband worked construction jobs.
She’s afraid they would suffer the same fate of prolonged displacement as Moron and his neighbors.
Indoc also joined an urban poor group, the Tipolo Residents Association (TRA), to fight for her family’s right to return to Brgy. Tipolo. But these days they’re afraid to mobilize to call on the government to act on their demands.
The security sector has accused some of their members of involvement with the communist rebel group New People’s Army. In other parts of the country, allegations like this had led to extrajudicial killings.
The grievances of the fire victims living on the grounds of the CICC is a common story among displaced people in the Philippines, said Ica Fernandez, an urban planning expert.
She cited the evacuees from the 2013 siege of Zamboanga City who stayed at a gymnasium for nine years before they were relocated, and the 2017 siege of Marawi City who are still unable to go back to their land four years later.
“They compose the hidden underclass of most of our cities. Their most fundamental right to housing is not possible,” she said.
City promised to donate lot to informal settlers
The fire victims were not known to hold titles over the land they used to occupy, but residents cited commitments by the local government to donate the lot to informal settlers. They call themselves “beneficiaries” of a 9.2-hectare lot spanning the adjacent barangays of Mantuyong, Guizo, and Tipolo in Mandaue City, which the local government had agreed to donate to the residents.
Documents obtained from Freedom of Information (FOI) requests showed evidence of the residents’ decades-long struggle to own the land.
The 9.2-hectare lot was part of an initiative by the local government of Mandaue City to give housing to the city’s informal settlers. As early as 1992, a resolution passed by the Sangguniang Panlungsod agreed that the lot would be “converted to homesites if not affected by government projects.”
The beneficiaries were identified to be “displaced families, migrants, and jobseekers who have occupied certain city owned, government, and foreshore lands…in good faith.”
The resolution recognized that many of the informal settlers had been occupants “as early as the close of the last world war.” It was also based on the understanding of the local officials that simply clearing the occupants would “[disturb] their possession and occupancy” and would mean “social and economic instability” for the occupants.
In 1998, then mayor Alfredo “Pedong” Ouano entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the urban poor group, the Federation of Mandaue Community of Urban Poor Inc. or Fedmacupi.
The MOA covered five barangays, namely Centro, Mantuyong, Guizo, Tipolo, and Subangdaku. Each beneficiary was supposed to get a plot of land up to a maximum 50 square meters.
In 2014, under the previous tenure of incumbent Mayor Jonas Cortes, more residents were given certificates as “validated and qualified beneficiaries” of a planned socialized housing project on the donated land.
But the city government’s recent actions seemed to neglect these agreements, residents said.
“This is a common tragedy. So many good policies are limited by political cycles. When the mayor is gone, or a governor or a president, there are no guarantees that commitments will be honored by the next administration,” said Fernandez.
It’s also a reflection of a common perspective among LGUs on urban development, which leans toward private sector partnerships, she said. “It’s the mode of urbanization they desire. If it’s commercialized, it is the highest investment of the land,” she said.
Originally published by PCIJ .