AC Mayor Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin, Porac Mayor Jaime “Jing” Capil
ANGELES CITY – The advocacy group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement has intensified its opposition to the Subic-Clark Railway Project (SCRP) with calls for “free and open public consultations” among its proponents, the private sectors and the local government units affected by the project.
It also called for a Senate Blue Ribbon Committee investigation of the project.
In separate letters to Angeles City Mayor Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin, Jr. and Porac Mayor Jing Capil, the PGKM called for immediate public consultations on the SCRP alignment citing concerns on the environmental impact of the project and the “socio-economic dislocation and devastation of the vast agricultural areas as well as the built-up commercial and housing developments” that it would cause.
“We write to you to seek your assistance in raising to the proper agencies our grave concerns over the Subic-Clark Railway Project which poses a clear and present danger to the socio-economic development of areas along the Subic-Clark corridor, our beloved city included, as well as its environmental impact therein,” said the PGKM in its letter to Lazatin.
To Capil, the PGKM noted: “Clearly threatened here is the promise of Porac as the “Makati of the North” with its corresponding high-rise buildings, industrial-commercial mixed-use townships and their immense benefits to the town and its citizens, all starting to emerge presently.”
Adding: “Even the ordinary farmers or small landowners are far from spared, the SCRP alignment would serve as a wall where it crosses and divides farmlands and homesteads, effectively restricting access.”
In its letter to Senator Richard Gordon who heads the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, the PGKM, in addition to the concerns raised with the LGUs, reiterated its opposition to the SCRP alignment echoing the Save Subic Mangrove Coalition on the environmental impact of the project that is threatening protected areas inside the Subic Freeport Zone.
Some 42 hectares of mangroves in the Subic freeport, classified as protected areas, “that your honor yourself nurtured as its very first chairman,” will be affected by the project’s train depot.
The PGKM said “farmers, landowners, housing developers, and business groups have been touching base with us to organize an even broader coalition to oppose the SCRP alignment.”
“We add our voices in opposition to the environmental degradation the SCRP will cause, whether by tunneling or slicing, to the hinterlands of Porac and Floridablanca in Pampanga,” the PGKM stated.
“It is in this regard that we now come to seek your intervention via a hearing on the matter by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee,” the PGKM said.
In an earlier interview, PGKM chair Ruperto Cruz said the Department of Transportation which oversees the project as part of the Build, Build, Build Program of the Duterte administration, said the SCRP alignment would have posed very little problem or none at all if only it followed the Subic-Clark-Tarlac -Expressway which by itself is already catering to cargo and passengers as well connecting the two freeports with less than an hour travel time.
