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Monday, July 1, 2013

North Triangle residents vow to fail road-widening along Agham Road

After staging a human chain action yesterday along Agham Road, North Triangle residents vow to fail a scheduled demolition of their homes this morning. Some 500 urban poor families along Agham Road have prepared their barricades as the deadline of the 30-day notice of eviction from the Quezon City local government ended yesterday.. 

The possible demolition of their homes is part of an 11.3 m road-widening project along Agham Road.

North Triangle, an area composed of three urban poor communities Sitio San Roque, San Isidro and Belmonte, and with an original population of some 12,000 informal settler families, is to be developed for the Quezon City Central Business District, a business hub at the heart of QC.

Less than three months since Aquino assumed his post as president, residents of North Triangle faced a violent demolition of their homes which resulted to a 7-hour standoff at EDSA on September 23, 2010. Since then, waves of demolition threats have affected the lives of the residents, especially the children.

According to the report of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, 7,238 families residing in the North Triangle were already relocated to off-city relocation sites in Rodriguez (Montalban), Rizal and San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan. The report adds that there are only 4,655 families in the community awaiting relocation (2,341 qualified and 2,314, disqualified families) to various NHA Resettlement Sites.

But Ka Inday Bagasbas, leader of September 23 Movement, a local alliance of residents, claims that of the relocated families, more than half have returned due to unbearable condition in government's off-city relocation sites.

"Those who returned from the relocation sites are with us in our fight against demolition of our homes. It only shows the defectiveness of government's relocation sites and its housing program which has never answered the squatting problem in the country.

"Aside from serving the interests of big businessmen in the country such as the Ayalas, the Aquino government has given big favors to low-cost housing developers like Jerry Acuzar, owner of New San Jose Developers and brother-in-law of Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa. This as it pretends to be catering services to the urban poor Filipinos," she ended. ###

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