President orders De Castro: ‘Relocate Northrail-affected families by December’

MAGALANG, Pampanga — President Arroyo wants some 26,000 families squatting along the old government railway in Bulacan and Pampanga relocated elsewhere by December to pave the way for the full-blast construction of the modern Manila-Clark Northrail system.

Vice President Noli de Castro, concurrent head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), said here the other day that the President has ordered him to make sure that some 12,000 affected families in Bulacan are resettled by September, and another 14,000 families in Pampanga by December.

The government needs some P7 billion to relocate all the affected families, he said, noting that thousands of families along the old railway in Metro Manila, particularly in Valenzuela, Caloocan and Malabon, have been resettled.

He said the contractors, which won in the government bidding for the development of the resettlement areas, are spending for the projects and will be refunded by the National Housing Authority (NHA) once funds are available.

De Castro said scores of families in Meycauayan, Balagtas and Bocaue towns, all in Bulacan, have volunteered to move to relocation sites within their respective municipalities.

"For as long as the relocation site is ready, we want the affected families to voluntary move in," he said.

"Many are volunteering to leave their homes along the railway so they would have more option in choosing the best location at the resettlement sites," De Castro said.

He said all the resettlement sites are located in the towns where the affected families reside.

He said local inter-agency committees, headed by the mayors of the affected towns, have started "social preparations" and documentation of the displaced families.

"We want only the original settlers as beneficiaries. The problem in resettlement cases is that the number of squatters grows once we announce that they are entitled to resettlement benefits," he said.

De Castro said the government has allocated P175,000 for each family to be relocated.

"The beneficiaries are to pay in installments over 30 years only P150,000 of the amount," he said.

Of the P175,000, he said P50,000 will be in the form of housing materials so the beneficiaries can build their own houses at the relocation sites.

"They will buy this back in 30 years without interest," he said.

The balance will be for the cost of the lots to be paid in 30 years with an interest rate of only six percent, he added.

Early last year, the President signed a bilateral agreement with China for a $400-million loan for the Northrail project.

Work on the first 32-kilometer stretch of the railway in Metro Manila started late last year.

The next phase will cover another 100 kilometers up to the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport at the Clark special economic zone in Pampanga.

The Northrail project is expected to be operational by 2008.

Meanwhile, De Castro said some land titles still have to be processed for some 40,000 families displaced by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.

The families now live in properties which the Arroyo administration gave them for free in various resettlement sites in Central Luzon.

Since 2002, after the President issued an order to give the resettlement house-and-lot packages for free to the Mt. Pinatubo victims, the government has already processed 10,044 titles.

De Castro distributed 1,500 of the land titles at the San Isidro resettlement here the other day.