Squatters clog city's waterways

Plans to relocate them to provinces have failed; focus is now on resettling them in city

By Alastair McIndoe, Philippines Correspondent A resident wading near his flooded home in the town of Santa Cruz, Laguna province. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE A WIDE canal running along the E. Rodriguez squatter settlement in Manila's Pasay district is so clogged with garbage that its fetid waters are carpeted with plastic bags, empty food cartons and rotting vegetables. Around 600 families are jammed into the warren of shanties there. Space is so precious that shacks on the edge of the embankment are precariously perched on stilts in the water. There are just a handful of toilets in E. Rodriguez. Solid human waste is thrown in plastic bags into the river; residents call them 'flying saucers'. 'The authorities tried many times to relocate them to areas outside Manila, but they don't want to move,' said Mr Bernard Pierquin, a Frenchman who has lived in this community for nearly 20 years and runs the Alouette Foundation education project for slum children. 'Nobody should be forced to live in these conditions, but they see even fewer job opportunities away from here.' As the clean-up continues in the wake of the devastating flooding caused by tropical storm Ketsana last month, squatter settlements such as E. Rodriguez are now a key issue in the debate on managing future floods, after garbage-choked drainage systems badly aggravated the disaster. Decades of unbridled urban development and population growth in Manila have forced the poor in this city of 14 million to settle on the margins. Today, the banks of waterways are congested with squatters living in flimsy housing, vulnerable to flooding and jeopardising flood-control defences. The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), which oversees the 16 cities that make up the capital region, estimates that 70,000 families - some 350,000 people - live in these high-risk areas. That is about a seventh of Manila's total squatter population. Many moved here from impoverished rural areas where wages are well below the meagre earnings of tricycle-taxi drivers, factory workers and pavement vendors, typical jobs of the urban poor. The authorities have tried for years to move the squatters to relocation sites in nearby provinces. 'They have had very little success,' admitted MMDA chairman Bayani Fernando. He pointed out that relocated families complain of a lack of jobs in their new housing settlements - and often drift back to the capital looking for work. So the controversial policy is being dropped in favour of inner-city relocations in medium-rise housing for rent on unused government land. Social housing schemes have already been launched in the capital, although on a very modest basis. In particular, Taguig City's Family Townhomes Project, a no-frills, mid-rise scheme, has caught the attention of mayors looking for models for cheap mass housing. The new thinking on squatters is now the official policy of an inter-agency council on informal settlers set up by President Gloria Arroyo earlier this year. 'But it can't be done overnight,' said Mr Fernando, who chairs the group. Right now, cash incentives are being offered to flood victims living along waterways to settle in the provinces. Nobody is suggesting that the impact of squatters living along the capital's drainage systems was solely responsible for the severity of the flooding. Experts say the toll from 10 days of back-to-back storms that pummelled the northern Philippines - 773 dead and damage estimated at 23 billion pesos (S$692 million) - was linked to climate change and environmental factors as well as botched urban planning. But with the prospect of more frequent and more severe storms, calls are mounting for the authorities to make the resettlement of squatters living alongside Manila's waterways a priority. According to the Asian Development Bank, the capital region produces 6,000 tonnes of garbage daily, but only 70 per cent is collected and taken to landfills. The rest is thrown into waterways or dumped in open areas. For 60 families displaced by the flooding in a makeshift camp in Bagong Silang, part of a squatter area in Manila's Quezon City, moving into a government housing block such as Taguig's Family Townhomes Project would be heaven-sent. The residents now live in huts made of chipboard and rust-pocked sheets of corrugated iron on a muddy vacant lot. Incredibly, given the dire conditions, their shelters are clean and tidy inside. 'Of course, we want to be relocated, but not to the provinces; it is too difficult to find work there,' said Ms Evelyn Abines, who came with her family to the big city five years ago from a small town on the southern island of Mindanao. 'But we are open to any relocation in the city.' amcindoe@yahoo.com