MABALACAT, Pampanga – Vice Pres. Noli de Castro has appealed to Filipinos to escalate housing above owning cellphones and texting in their order of priorities.
In his speech before members of the Pampanga Press Club here, De Castro noted that while “housing is the biggest investment of the ordinary citizen”, it comes lower in their priorities than cellphone ownership and texting.
“So I ask our countrymen to put more priority to housing, education and health,” said De Castro, even as he vowed to finish his job as housing czar of the Arroyo administration in the last 15 months of his term.
“We in the housing sector continue to undertake means to make amortization for your dream house affordable. We have restructured the policies of housing agencies and made them investor-friendly so that we can lure businessmen and other developers to continue to put up housing projects,” he said.
A group called CIA Bayanihan Textpower Brigade, Inc. which was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2006 as a non-profit, non-sectarian, charitable and humanitarian organization, has reported that among 87 million Filipinos, 43 million own a cellphone.
Describing the Philippines as the text capital of the world, the group said that over 600 million text messages are sent in the country everyday.
It cited a survey indicating that “cellphone load is number one on the product list of priorities by the Filipino people, beating coffee, shampoo and snacks and other food needs.”
“Telephone companies are earning billions of pesos daily from he sale of cellphone loads alone,” the group added in its website bayanihan-cia.org.
But De Castro urged homeless Filipinos to spend less on cellphone use and spare what they could save for low-cost housing amortizations.
He cited the case of hundreds of families to be relocated here to give way to the long-delayed Caloocan-to-Clark north railway project, who would pay only a little over P200 as monthly for 30 years. “You probably spend P300 a month for texting, so why not spend less for homes for your families?” he asked.
De Castro also stressed that all housing agencies under the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) which he heads has been streamlined to prioritize a specific function. “Thus, the National Housing Authority (NHA) is now in charge of relocation projects,” he said.
To attract more investors into the government’s low cost housing program, De Castro said: “we have made more convenient and efficient the process for obtaining housing and other related permits,” adding “we decreased the number of documentary requirements and we imposed deadlines for every process required”.
De Castro also vowed to carry out relocation projects only in consultation with those affected. “We listened to beneficiaries of housing programs and coordinated with them in pushing new approaches in housing,” he noted.
He referred to this as “beneficiary-led relocation and private sector supported development for resettlement sites.”
In his speech before members of the Pampanga Press Club here, De Castro noted that while “housing is the biggest investment of the ordinary citizen”, it comes lower in their priorities than cellphone ownership and texting.
“So I ask our countrymen to put more priority to housing, education and health,” said De Castro, even as he vowed to finish his job as housing czar of the Arroyo administration in the last 15 months of his term.
“We in the housing sector continue to undertake means to make amortization for your dream house affordable. We have restructured the policies of housing agencies and made them investor-friendly so that we can lure businessmen and other developers to continue to put up housing projects,” he said.
A group called CIA Bayanihan Textpower Brigade, Inc. which was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2006 as a non-profit, non-sectarian, charitable and humanitarian organization, has reported that among 87 million Filipinos, 43 million own a cellphone.
Describing the Philippines as the text capital of the world, the group said that over 600 million text messages are sent in the country everyday.
It cited a survey indicating that “cellphone load is number one on the product list of priorities by the Filipino people, beating coffee, shampoo and snacks and other food needs.”
“Telephone companies are earning billions of pesos daily from he sale of cellphone loads alone,” the group added in its website bayanihan-cia.org.
But De Castro urged homeless Filipinos to spend less on cellphone use and spare what they could save for low-cost housing amortizations.
He cited the case of hundreds of families to be relocated here to give way to the long-delayed Caloocan-to-Clark north railway project, who would pay only a little over P200 as monthly for 30 years. “You probably spend P300 a month for texting, so why not spend less for homes for your families?” he asked.
De Castro also stressed that all housing agencies under the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) which he heads has been streamlined to prioritize a specific function. “Thus, the National Housing Authority (NHA) is now in charge of relocation projects,” he said.
To attract more investors into the government’s low cost housing program, De Castro said: “we have made more convenient and efficient the process for obtaining housing and other related permits,” adding “we decreased the number of documentary requirements and we imposed deadlines for every process required”.
De Castro also vowed to carry out relocation projects only in consultation with those affected. “We listened to beneficiaries of housing programs and coordinated with them in pushing new approaches in housing,” he noted.
He referred to this as “beneficiary-led relocation and private sector supported development for resettlement sites.”
