MANILA, Philippines — Residents of a fishing community in Bulacan accused a major conglomerate of fast tracking the move to uproot them from their homes—the site of a planned airport project—in the middle of coronavirus pandemic.
Shirley Bacon, a resident of Barangay Taliptip in Bulakan town, said the remaining families in Sitio Kinse will continue to stand their ground and refuse to leave the waters they call home. The proposed New Manila International Airport—a project of San Miguel Corp.—will be built on 2,500 hectares of fishing and mangrove areas in northern Manila Bay.
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SMC has said that its infrastructure projects will push through despite the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"All our major, important projects will continue," SMC president and COO Ramon Ang said at an annual shareholders' meeting in June.
Bacon told Philstar.com in a phone interview Thursday that uniformed personnel went to their coastal village on July 14 and July 19 to talk to them.
“Tinanong nila ‘yung taga rito kung ano ‘yung talagang gusto. Sabi namin gusto namin ng pabahay at hanapbuhay,” she said.
(They asked the people here what we really want. We told them that we want relocation and livelihoods)
Some residents of Taliptip have already demolished their own homes in exchange for P250,000 in compensation. At the time, they said they were told that there was no place for them to relocate because no land was available for them.
Bacon also said that people who identified themselves as coming from SMC informed them Wednesday that a place has been found for them to relocate.
“Sila na mismo naghanap ng lupa at ‘yung may inaalok na bahay kung gusto daw namin. Kaya nga lang syempre sa mahal ng lote o bahay aabot ba ‘yung P250,000 namin?” Bacon said.
(They went and looked for land and they offered that to us. But with the cost of the land and of building a house, will that P250,000 be enough?)
“Talagang kahit ganitong may pandemya, pinipilit nilang maalis kami dito,” she added.
(Even though there is a pandemic, they're trying to get us to leave)
NewsX: Fed by the waters
No ECC for project, environmental group says
Citing a certification from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, non-profit Oceana Philippines said no environmental compliance certificate has been issued yet for the construction of the airport project.
SMC contractor Silvertides Holdings secured an ECC for the same area but only for the construction of access road and administration building.
No application for reclamation for the airport project had been filed with the Philippine Reclamation Authority as of September 2019.
"This requires full adherence to the requirements of the Environmental Impact Assessment Systems Act, the Fisheries Code as amended, among other laws, which means full disclosure of the project, programmatic impact assessment of project as an airport and public participation," environmental lawyer Gloria Estenzo-Ramos, Oceana vice president, said.
"It is not clear if Silvertides was able to secure an ECC for their extraction of the reported 205 million cubic meters of filling materials to be used for the project," she added.
Estenzo-Ramos also said that the Environmental Management Bureau office in Central Luzon refused to issue a copy of environmental impact assessment to affected residents and to Oceana Philippines. The EIS is an important document for stakeholders to understand the environmental impacts of a proposed project.
No EIS related to the airport project has been published on the website of the Environmental Management Bureau's Environmental Impact Assessment and Management Division.
The latest EIS published, for an irrigation project in Guimaras, was posted on July 15.
Scientists and environmentalists have warned that the project will bring intense flooding in coastal and low-lying areas of Bulacan and other provinces. The area will be also highly-susceptible to liquefactions or when loosely-packed land loses strength and integrity during earthquakes.
"The stakeholders, including non-government organizations and people's organizations, have the right to participate in decision-making in addition to the people's rights to a balanced and healthful ecology protected by the State,” Ramos said.
Photo essay: Home is where the coast is