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The Makabayan bloc emphasized the direct effect of privatization of public transport to the Filipino people as fees will increase.
From water, electricity, up to transportation, the government’s public-private partnership (PPP) projects continue to be “profit-driven,” which, according to multisectoral groups, is the culprit behind the increasing prices of social services and basic commodities.
Residents said that the private blue guards are deployed by the JMV Security Services again, the same agency that deployed 80 armed private blue guards in their community on April 4.
Under the 2025 National Expenditure Program, the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development’s budget was cut down from a proposed P4.22 million to P3.55 million. The DHSUD, accordingly, announced that it was lowering its target of building low-cost housing units from 4 million by 2028 to 3.2 million. Kadamay, however, asserts that this target is too low to accommodate the current housing backlog, which the group estimates to reach “as high as 12 million” by 2028.
“[Secretary] Estrella, we are pleading to you. Please have mercy on us. The attacks against us have gone too far and our human rights are being violated. We can no longer go to school because of what San Miguel Corporation (SMC) is doing to us. Many young people among us still want to study, but I am one of those who had to stop because we can no longer live in peace there," Rustene Pelayo Leoncio said in Filipino.
Residents said that in 2023, SMC initially presented a “resettlement program" for Mariahangin families, offering money amounting to P75,000 with land or P100,000 if without land. Recently, the offer has increased to P400,000 per family to urge them to vacate their ancestral lands.
In 2023, DAR revoked the NOC of the 10,821 hectares of land of the indigenous peoples in Bugsuk, Palawan which was initially issued in 2014. Residents said that this decision by DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III prompted escalated harassment and intimidation in their community in Sitio Mariahangin.
“We cannot sleep well these days because we fear that they will enter the community. Our husbands have skipped work and our livelihoods have been paralyzed just so we can defend our ancestral land from their attempts to seize it. Our children sometimes do not have anything to eat.”
“If anyone had rights over the Manila Bay, it is the Filipino people, and if it is to serve any purpose, it should be for the benefit of the general population, and not an elite few.”
What is common in the stories of the residents in various coastal sitios of Bulacan is that the “news” about their impending displacement is coming to them in trickles of information packaged in a threat.
While the government is riding on the popular call for cleanup of Manila Bay, harnessing free labor of volunteers for fishing out thrash in Manila Bay, it is, on the other hand, disproportionately blaming the poor and seeking their demolition in favor of reclamation plans and other real estate development.
Unlike in past typhoons, the flood was higher and stayed longer, and the surges hit stronger, carrying off the sand at the top of the soil.
“The birds’ habitat, the people’s source of livelihood and protection from storm surges are being turned into just another concrete jungle for the profit of the very few.”
That P735.6-billion reclamation budget from SMC seemed to have been enough for NEDA to ignore the thousands of people to be displaced and the ecologically critical vegetation to be damaged.
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