MANILA, Philippines - A partylist congressman on Tuesday supported the call of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines for the Philippine government to open up government lands for mass housing
of informal settlers living along estero and other danger zone areas in Metro Manila.
Anakpawis partylist Rep. Fernando Hicap said he agrees with the proposal of Manila Auxillary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, chairman of the CBCP National Secretariat for Social Action, saying the national government should stop selling public lands to foreign corporations.
Instead, the government should mobilize resources for mass housing projects built on government lands to accommodate not less than 500,000 informal settlers all over Metro Manila, he added.
Hicap said the scheme can be applied to other cities facing the same problem in different parts of the country.
"Of course the long-term solution would be the implementation of genuine land reform and national industrialization which need an overhaul of the system and power relations in the country," he said.
Hicap said President Benigno Aquino III should rescind the policy of selling public lands to foreign investors and other real estate monopolies and instruct concerned government agencies to immediately conduct a national inventory of all government lands.
On top of the mass housing projects, the legislator also proposed that the government invests on productive campaigns such as job creation based on production of goods and services that would employ millions
of jobless urban poor.
In return, these workers would enable them to pay low-cost housing with the support from the state in the form of institutional subsidies and support services, he added.
Hicap said the Aquino government can rechannel the P44 billion it set aside for the budget of the controversial Conditional Cash Transfer program to mass housing projects and sustainable job creation project.
He cited the potential of the government-owned Food Terminal Incorporated in Taguig City, one of the largest industrial complexes in the country.
He said the Aquino government can build mass housing project on unused government land inside FTI compound for the relocation of informal settlers and design a job employment program that would enable urban poor families to land jobs in the 300 firms now in FTI.