Affluent squatters hold sway in Tondaligan
BONUAN LANDGRABBING SCAM
“The truth of the matter is I was shocked”. This was the reaction of City Legal Officer George Mejia, noting the many huge and illegal infrastructures now rising simultaneously along the beach in Bonuan Binloc erected by both professional and affluent squatters.
One infrastructure, he said, is obviously intended for a resort house and pointed to high concrete fences that have been erected to fence off the claimed parcels of beach land.
The Task Force on Housing and Urban Poor Resettlement appears tentatively fazed by the legal questions being raised against its plan to eject both the affluent and the squatters.
Mejia, a member of the task force, conceded that on the shore of Bonuan Binloc, the affluent squatters are holding sway.
Meanwhile, the affluent squatters remain faceless as not even one among them has been identified.
This led the task force to believe that many of the names appearing in the tax declarations may just be dummies of the affluent squatters.
Mejia said the task force is awaiting the identification of the other owners of the structures in the beach being undertaken by Bonuan Binloc Barangay Captain Ronaldo Torio and Chief of Police Superintendent Dionicio Borromeo.
He added that the moment the owners of the structures in the beach are identified, they will start the demolition process.
Mejia noted that while Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. already ordered the cancellation of all tax declarations issued by the City Assessor’s Office, only five TDs of the more than 100 have so far been cancelled.
“I can understand why the City Assessors Office is very cautious since they might cancel tax declarations covering areas even outside the area delineated by Proclamation 98,” Mejia said.
The proclamation that created the former National Children’s Park and Playground, now Tondaligan Park, was issued by then President Diosdado Macapagal in 1964.
BLISS PROJECT
Meanwhile, former Councilor Alex de Venecia, also a member of the task force, said 80 percent of the occupants of the BLISS housing project in Bonuan Binloc are no longer from Dagupan.
He discovered this when he visited the BLISS housing project and noted that many of the houses and lots originally allocated to poor families are now owned by rich people who are not even from the city.
“This is bad because we have rich people are now staying in a supposed socialized housing built by the then Ministry of Human Settlement during the Marcos era,” said De Venecia.
The present BLISS occupants are reportedly from Baguio, La Union and Manila who have made the housing project just their vacation homes.
He recommended to the task force to also look into the ownership inside the BLISS Housing project to determine if the original beneficiaries may have been forcibly ejected from the area by the present affluent owners.—LM
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