CITY OF SAN FERNANDO —Forty houses and other illegal structures have recently been demolished along the Pampanga River in Macabebe town, but 698 more structures, including a house costing P5 million, still remain up for demolition.
Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) regional director Antonio Molano Jr. said the demolition operation of his agency is part of compliance with the order of the Supreme Court way back in 2008 for “all concerned executive departments and agencies to immediately act and discharge their respective official duties and obligations” in the cleaning up of Manila Bay.
The task included measures to prevent pollution in all river channels that flow into the bay.
Molano said that while 40 houses and illegal structures have already been removed along the Pampanga River in the area of Macabebe, 698 more houses and other illegal structures have yet to be dismantled.
“All connected rivers and waterways that eventually exit to Manila Bay should be cleared from any obstructions,” he stressed.
Virginia Lacap, chair of Barangay Balibago in Macabebe, appealed to the government to find adequate relocation areas for families to be affected by the demolition.
Lacap, a relative of a former mayor, admitted owning a house costing P5 million along the bank of the Pampanga River but said she would not mind giving it up for demolition.
But she appealed in behalf of some 500 other families whose homes are slated for demolition by the DPWH.
“My house is worth P5 million. It’s okay to demolish it if it is the law. But I pity my constituents who do not have the means to relocate,” Lacap lamented.
But Molano said his agency could not help the affected families anymore as they had been told not to build structures on the river bank from the very beginning and had been served three notices to vacate their areas.
“We cannot exempt anybody,” he stressed.
In December 2008, the Supreme Court ordered all concerned government agencies to coordinate in the clean-up, restoration, and preservation of Manila Bay.
In a unanimous 36-page decision penned by Justice Presbitero Velasco, Jr., the Court ordered petitioner government agencies to coordinate the cleanup, restoration, and preservation of the water quality of the Manila Bay which it described as “a place with a proud historic past, once brimming with marine life and, for so many decades in the past, a spot for different contact recreation activities, but now a dirty and slowly dying expanse mainly because of the abject official indifference of people and institutions.”
The petitioners included the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority), Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Education, Department of Health, Department of Agriculture, Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Budget and Management, Philippine Coast Guard, the Philippine National Police Maritime Group, and the Department of the Interior and Local Government.
“There is a need to set timetables for the performance and completion of the tasks, some of them as defined for them by law and the nature of their respective offices and mandates,” the Court said.
