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Government urban poor bodies skeptic on win-win solution to UP’s squatting problem

As far as government coordinating agencies are concerned, coming up with a win-win solution to UP’s land problem is far from easy. They are even doubtful that the stakeholders will reach a certain level of agreement.

“What we are facing here, you see, are parties at extreme opposites,” explains Atty. Maria Cleofe Jettie Sandoval, head of the Sectoral Policy Unit of the National Poverty Commission. “You have in this corner the communities and their NGO partners clamoring for a proclamation and in another corner, the state university asserting its right to preserve its properties,” she added. At this rate where people are beginning to invoke rights to tenure, she quips, not even a well-conceived relocation package will do.

“Our immediate concern right now,” says Atty. Sandoval, “ is to get UP’s stand on the issue and maybe convince the University administration to seek creative ways other than actual relocation.”

Director Nandy Inandan of the Presidential Commission on the Urban Poor agrees with Atty. Sandoval as far as formulating a creative resettlement package is concerned. With very few accessible relocation sites and the reality of a limited urban space in our metropolis, where will UP put all these people?” he asks. “That is why we are suggesting the possibility of UP allocating a space for a housing program for some of these families,” he adds. Inandan’s office is seriously considering a comprehensive on-site urban development in these areas as an option, considering that not all of the supposed illegal settlers are actually outsiders. “A good number of these families, anyway, are also families of UP employees,” he points out.
But Non-Government Organi-zations doing community work in the affected areas are bent on coming out with nothing less than an actual proclamation either through law or through presidential directive. Urban Poor Associates’ Kim de Guzman who organizes a couple of these communities asserts that by doing so people would be merely claiming a right earned from years of settlement in these areas. UPA, she maintains, is not even bothered by the fact that UP is an academic institution exempted from urban land reform initiatives.

Mass organizations doing legwork in the communities are riding on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s much-publicized efforts to curb the country’s urban housing problem. “If the President has done it in other parts of the city, she can also do it in UP,” de Guzman points out. “All she needs is to issue an executive order.”

Atty. Sandoval, however, clarifies that President Arroyo never expressed her stand on the issue. “When we first prepared the documents for Malacañang, all she asked was for us to verify UP’s stand on the issue,” she notes. “And this was properly specified in a letter we got from the UP Chancellor dated February 1, 2002.” She adds that plans for a dialogue between UP and the illegal settlers facilitated by government coordinating agencies were also scheduled but later shelved until a new UP Diliman Chancellor is appointed upon the UP General Counsel’s request.

Atty. Sandoval is also not too hopeful about a possible proclamation on the concerned UP areas. She said that records from regulatory agencies all attest to the University as the owner of the encroached properties and has therefore all the right to initiate whatever development projects it deems as long as it is within the bounds of law. She says further that UP as an academic institution should not even be subjected to the rudiments of an urban land reform issue in the first place.

“Even if, for the sake of argument, GMA indeed issues an Executive Order proclaiming these lands for urban land reform, I don’t think it will be enough to override the UP’s Charter which was guaranteed by a legislative enactment.” She reasons.

In Atty. Sandoval’s opinion, the most that President Arroyo can do is to convince the UP Administration to accommodate the families and come up with a comprehensive on-site housing program. On the part of the settlers, meanwhile, she says that they can look at the possibility of the President issuing a directive to probe which of the encroached UP areas can be identified as idle. A certain law, she said, provides for the identification of idle government lands, specifically those lacking a definite structural development in 20 years, and their reclassification as urban development areas.

“But then again, this is still subject to investigation,” she points out. “You cannot simply call a property idle in the absence of a structure or development program because we all know, especially in an academic institution like UP, nothing can be built without a budget.”

Atty. Sandoval also expressed her worries about a possible deadlock on the UP land use issue. “Of course as a social development agency, we are concerned about the plight of the affected families,” she shares. “But as you can see UP is the owner and has legal rights that must be considered.”

As to why UP’s squatter problem reached this scale, Atty. Sandoval says that UP itself has a share of the blame. “By tolerance of the University — by its own failure to secure its properties from encroachments — the people must have felt that everything is all right,” she notes.
“But tolerance,” she points out “should not be taken to mean ownership.” (Alicor Panao)

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Updated October 9, 2002
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