Urban poor group calls on VMMC employees, patients to petition CGMA out of the hospital

PRESS RELEASE l 10 December 2011
KALIPUNAN NG DAMAYANG MAHIHIRAP
Reference: Carlito Badion, Kadamay national vice chair, 09393873766.

September 23 Movement, an alliance of urban poor residents of Sitio San Roque in the North Triangle area in Quezon City has called on the hospital employees and patients of the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC) to condemn the stay of Congresswoman Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (CGMA) at the said hospital.

Estrelieta Bagasbas, leader of the group, says the ex-president has no right to step on the ground of the VMMC after she signed in 2007 Executive Orders 620 (Rationalizing and speeding up the development of the East and North Triangles, and the Veterans Memorial Area of Quezon City, as a well-planned, integrated and environmentally balanced mixed-use development model) and EO 620-A (Expanding the composition of the Urban Triangle Development Commission and clarifying its structure and functions).

“These orders have sped up the demolition of homes of some 24,000 urban poor families, including transfer if not liquidation and face-off of government offices and hospitals including the VMMC,” according to Bagasabas.

“The employees of VMMC whose jobs Arroyo have been put into peril, as those executive orders still remain with effectivity, should treat the former president as an outcast in the hospital. The employees and VMMC patients and their families have every right to petition for the immediate removal of the CGMA from the hospital’s patient list,” Bagasbas said.

Meanwhile, the residents of Sitio San Roque in the North Triangle, and residents along BIR and NIA Road in the East Triangle, all under threat of eviction from their communities has planned a regular protest action at the gate of the VMMC, after the ex-president was transferred to the hospital yesterday.

Promise to make CGMA's every day at VMMC miserable
According to Jocy Lopez, chair of Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) North Triangle chapter said, ‘as we have promised, we will make every day of Mrs Arroyo at the VMMC as miserable as ours.”

“She is the mastermind of a massive demolition that would take away homes of some 24,000 urban poor families in our communities. Her executive orders also gave way to an anomalous joint-venture contract between the National Housing Authority and Ayala Land Inc.(ALI), where San Roque land in North Triangle is allegedly priced at an amount almost half of its actual price,” she adds.

“Unless Aquino repeal Arroyo’s EO 620 and 620-A , investigate and make the former president accountable for the anomalous joint-venture contract between the NHA and the ALI, as well as for other anomalous contracts entered by the Arroyo administration using public funds, the residents of North and East Triangle will never be silent,” the leader added.

Kadamay, together with other sectoral groups nationwide, condemn the special treatment to the former executive head and demand that she be put in an ordinary prison cell while cases filed against her are being heard in trial court. ###