TARLAC CITY—More than a hundred homeowners of Teresa Homes, a semi-government housing project in Barangay Tibag here, lighted candles during a prayer rally Sunday night as part of continuing protest actions against the move of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) to evict them from their homes.
The candles were arranged in such a way as to form the words “GSIS” and “SALOT”.
Two days earlier, the protesters, majority of them public school teachers, barricaded the entrance to the main road of the subdivision, a joint project of the GSIS under the “Bahay Ko Program” and real estate developer JQG Homes Development Corporation.
They vowed to continue with their daily protest actions until the management of the state pension funds recalls the order to eject them from their properties.
Candida Tiglao, president of the Teresa Homes Subdivision Homeowners Association, said the GSIS’ decision to remove them from their homes as a result of the cancellation of their deeds of conditional sale was “unjustified and arbitrary.”
She said the notices to vacate, which they received last December, ignored the agreements reached in August 2007 during a dialogue at the GSIS Main Office in Pasay City between some 50 officers and members of the homeowners association and GSIS executives.
The agreements included the “recomputation and adjustment of their accounts,” she said.
The Teresa Homes project has been laden with controversies since it began almost 10 years ago. Aside from complaints of sub-standard materials being used in the construction of houses, there were also cases of “fraudulent transactions” being committed by sales agents of the subdivision allegedly in connivance with certain GSIS employees.
In 2005, the GSIS Board of Trustees dismissed from service the manager of the Tarlac Field Office and a data controller in its Main Office in connection with the “processing and granting of anomalous housing loans under the GSIS Bahay Ko Program,” according to a press statement issued that year.
These “spurious housing loans to unqualified borrowers, mostly public school teachers, (and) amounting to more than P241 million” included the Teresa Homes subdivision project, the statement said.
GSIS president and general manager Winston Garcia was also quoted in the statement as saying “the dismissal(s) … (were) part of the continuing process of the GSIS to weed its ranks of undesirables who are causing the pension fund to lose millions of pesos through various anomalies.”
The candles were arranged in such a way as to form the words “GSIS” and “SALOT”.
Two days earlier, the protesters, majority of them public school teachers, barricaded the entrance to the main road of the subdivision, a joint project of the GSIS under the “Bahay Ko Program” and real estate developer JQG Homes Development Corporation.
They vowed to continue with their daily protest actions until the management of the state pension funds recalls the order to eject them from their properties.
Candida Tiglao, president of the Teresa Homes Subdivision Homeowners Association, said the GSIS’ decision to remove them from their homes as a result of the cancellation of their deeds of conditional sale was “unjustified and arbitrary.”
She said the notices to vacate, which they received last December, ignored the agreements reached in August 2007 during a dialogue at the GSIS Main Office in Pasay City between some 50 officers and members of the homeowners association and GSIS executives.
The agreements included the “recomputation and adjustment of their accounts,” she said.
The Teresa Homes project has been laden with controversies since it began almost 10 years ago. Aside from complaints of sub-standard materials being used in the construction of houses, there were also cases of “fraudulent transactions” being committed by sales agents of the subdivision allegedly in connivance with certain GSIS employees.
In 2005, the GSIS Board of Trustees dismissed from service the manager of the Tarlac Field Office and a data controller in its Main Office in connection with the “processing and granting of anomalous housing loans under the GSIS Bahay Ko Program,” according to a press statement issued that year.
These “spurious housing loans to unqualified borrowers, mostly public school teachers, (and) amounting to more than P241 million” included the Teresa Homes subdivision project, the statement said.
GSIS president and general manager Winston Garcia was also quoted in the statement as saying “the dismissal(s) … (were) part of the continuing process of the GSIS to weed its ranks of undesirables who are causing the pension fund to lose millions of pesos through various anomalies.”
