Taiwanese investors to sue SBMA over takeover of golf course

Inquirer
Last updated 04:54am (Mla time) 06/11/2007

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT — Taiwanese investors are set to file on June 12 contempt charges against officials of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority for the alleged illegal takeover of the Subic Bay Golf and Country Club Inc. (SBGCCI) here over debts and labor and sanitation violations.

 

Jack Ho, manager of the SBGCCI, said the SBMA proceeded with the takeover although Judge Ramon Caguioa of the Olongapo Regional Trial Court has issued an injunction order on the agency on May 24 and as the company continued to exert efforts to comply with its obligations.

 

“The SBMA seemed to be above the law. Our company president, Susan Ho, is the chair of the Subic Bay Taiwan Chamber of Commerce. Its members include Acer, Hitachi and so on. This illegal takeover will send a very, very bad signal to foreign investors,” Ho told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

 

“[It means that] the investment of foreign investors can be taken any time, any day,” Ho said.

 

In a statement, the SBMA confirmed it “recovered possession and took over the management” of the club after the board of directors terminated the lease contract of the SBGCCI on Thursday.

 

Ramon Agregado, SBMA senior deputy administrator for support services, and Raul Marcelo, SBMA deputy administrator for tourism, delivered the notice of lease termination at around 5 p.m. on Friday.

 

Agregado posted the notice at the door of the club’s administration office when club officials refused to accept the notice.

 

He said the SBMA board ended the lease as well as the development contract agreement with the Universal International Group (UIG), which owns the SBGCCI, for “failure of the latter to settle its obligations with the SBMA.”

 

According to him, the UIG owed the SBMA $350,000 and P16 million in rentals. It also failed to stop labor and environmental violations, defaulted in delivering on its commitment to build 100 condominium units and 80 villas, and fell short in upgrading the facility into a world-class sports and leisure destination.

 

The UIG, Agregado said, were reminded of these through a letter on Dec. 8, 2006.

 

He said the SBMA did not violate the injunction order when the “cease and desist order” against the SBGCCI was implemented.

 

“What we did was we terminated the lease agreement and recovered the properties of the whole facility,” he said.

 

Ho on Sunday said the SBMA officials harassed the employees who sided with the management by refusing them entry into the zone. On Friday, he said SBMA policemen had hurt some of the employees.

 

“What kind of a country is this?” he asked.

 

He also rued that the Olongapo City police did not act on SBGCCI’s request to help stop the takeover on the strength of the injunction order.

 

Director General Oscar Calderon, chief of the Philippine National Police, on Sunday said the PNP could not intervene until the court ordered it to do so.

 

Ho said the SBGCCI and UIG invested more than P1 billion on the project.

 

“We came to invest because we believe in this country and we are very sad that we are being treated like this,” he said.

 

In the SBMA statement, Marcelo assured that the employees would be retained as the golf course would continue its operations.

 

He said the club’s members expressed “full support over the recent change in the management of the golf course.” Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon

Doll-making heals children of trauma

By Margaux Ortiz
Inquirer
Last updated 05:13am (Mla time) 06/11/2007

MANILA, Philippines — To other people, the dolls may look ordinary and even crudely made, but to the children who designed them, they symbolize their dreams and at times, can also serve as instruments of healing.

 

Last month, children aged 6 to 13 and living in shanties on Cambridge Street in Cubao, Quezon City, were paired off with an “ate” (big sister) or “kuya” (big brother) — students of the University of the Philippines in Diliman who were studying art.

 

Their mission: to participate in a rag doll-making workshop designed to show that art can have a role, even in the lives of children.

 

UP professor Flaudette May Datuin, who organized the event with artist Norma Liongoren, said the project began two years ago as a class exercise for her Art and Society students.

 

At that time, Datuin asked her students to each make a doll, give it a name and provide it with a life history.

 

She then required them to come up with an advertising campaign for selling their dolls.

 

“The exercise was meant to facilitate discussions on the popular and most common notions of beauty and the effects of consumerism on art,” Datuin said in an interview with the Inquirer.

 

Popular culture

 

According to the UP professor, before creating their dolls, her students did some research on three icons of popular culture: the Japanese shojo (young girl), which Datuin described as a “manga” (cartoon) and animé character, usually a young girl, whose powers are “based on sexual innocence”; the heroines of fairy tales and Disney animation films like Cinderella, Snow White and Belle of Beauty and the Beast; and the “impossibly proportioned” Barbie doll.

 

“I told them that the dolls should not only be able to challenge the negative traits of the popular culture icons but also adopt their positive attributes,” Datuin said.

 

She recalled that most of her students came up with elaborate, strongly anti-Barbie dolls. However, it was a “blank” rag doll — a faceless doll without any design or decoration –that provided the idea for turning the academic exercise into an “art-for-healing” project.

 

“The creators explained that, with a blank doll, mother and child could interact and bond while decorating and personalizing it,” the professor explained.

 

Child’s hopes

 

The doll could also serve as an outlet for the child’s hopes, dreams and in some cases, traumatic experiences.

 

After Typhoon “Reming” devastated the Bicol region late last year, Datuin and her artist-friend Alma Quinto decided to bring the class exercise to the area.

 

Dubbed “Barbing Pinay,” the participants included 19 of Datuin’s students who teamed up with out-of-school youths aged 15 to 18 to make 20 rag dolls which they later distributed to children staying at the Maipon Evacuation Center in Guinobatan, Albay.

 

Some of the children had lost members of their family and most of their belongings and were very happy to receive a doll.

 

Datuin’s 8-year-old daughter, Ligia, who participated in the Bicol workshop, renamed the project OTAP or Tao Pinoy (Filipino person).

 

This summer, two more workshops were held, one at the SOS Village in Muntinlupa City which saw Datuin’s students paired off with orphans and abandoned children, and the other on Cambridge Street.

 

Liongoren, who has lived on a street near Cambridge for three decades, said Datuin proposed holding a doll-making workshop for her neighbors at last year’s Christmas party. She immediately agreed.

 

Values formation

 

“My family has always been involved in organizing Bible studies for children of informal settlers in the area,” she said.

 

According to Liongoren, together with Alma Francisco, a fellow member of the nongovernment organization Reach Ministries Inc., they sought to promote values formation among their young audience and to draw out their feelings, inner thoughts and aspirations.

 

After being assigned to a kuya or ate, the children talked to their partner about what they wanted their doll to be. The two then worked on turning their ideas into a reality.

 

“They made their dolls into nurses, teachers, doctors, police detectives and even rock stars,” Liongoren said with a smile.

 

Enjay Ricohermoso, 11, who is a Grade 6 student of the Quirino Elementary School, said his doll, which he called Alfred, was also an 11-year-old boy who wants to become a doctor “when he grows up.”

 

“I want to become a doctor someday and maybe have a house of my own,” Ricohermoso said softly in Filipino.

 

Inspiring stories

 

Liongoren added that the other kids made up inspiring stories about their dolls, drawing from their own experiences.

 

Christina Senopera, 9, created a courageous mother out of her rag doll — a skilled laundry woman and seamstress who uses thread and bubbles to save battered women.

 

“We found out that Christina’s mother single-handedly took care of her nine children after her husband died,” Liongoren said.

 

The collaboration also proved to be a positive experience for the UP students.

 

“Seeing my partner very happy made me very happy also,” Kirk Darrell dela Cruz, one of the students, wrote in OTAP’s blog, saying he was touched to see his partner hugging her doll as they walked.

 

“Even though it wasn’t the best I made, I realized the doll could change the life of a child. I’m happy that I became a part of that process,” Dela Cruz said.

 

For a short period, the dolls were displayed in Liongoren’s art gallery on New York Street in Quezon City.

 

“I wanted others to see them, to make the kids feel important. They know this is a place where we display our artworks,” said Liongoren, whose family owns the gallery.

 

Datuin said they are planning to hold more workshops and invite child psychologists to talk to children who show signs of having been abused.

 

“The workshop has taught the children that art has the ability to heal. Even if they are poor, it is just not material poverty that should be addressed but the spirit and imagination as well,” she said.

NBI seizes P27 million worth of fake apparel

By Allison Lopez
Inquirer
Last updated 05:28am (Mla time) 06/11/2007

Around P27-million worth of fake apparel were seized by operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) at a popular mall in Makati City as part of the agency’s crackdown against pirated goods.

 

Agents of NBI-Intellectual Property Rights Division (IPRD), headed by lawyer Jose Justo Yap, confiscated 8,052 pieces of counterfeit Juicy Couture products on June 1 at the Lovell Manabat store on the third level of Glorietta 2 in Ayala Center, and at the store’s other outlet on San Clemente Street, Barangay Capitolyo, Pasig City.

 

In his report, Yap said his group conducted surveillance and confirmed the sale of the fake items, following a complaint from the legal counsel of Juicy Couture Inc. & Liz Claiborne Licensing Inc.

 

Judge Reynaldo Ros of the Manila Regional Trial Court issued the search warrant to the NBI-IPRD, which then raided the establishments and seized the fake items.

 

Charges of violations of the Intellectual Property Rights Code, or trademark infringement, are being readied against the store owner.

2 historical events led to birth of modern RP

By Dr. Pablo S. Trillana III

Last updated 03:57am (Mla time) 06/11/2007

(Editor’s Note: The author is a former chair of the National Historical Institute and currently Knight Grand Officer of the Knights of Rizal.)

 

MANILA, Philippines — Within a week of each other, the nation will commemorate two events of great national significance — the declaration of independence in Kawit, Cavite, on June 12, 1898, and the birth of national hero Dr. Jose Rizal on June 19, 1861.

 

These seemingly disparate events, in the course of our story as a people, led to a historical conjunction that gave birth to our modern nation. It would be difficult to think of one without the other.

 

The radical idea of separating from Spain through a revolution is generally laid at the doorstep of the Katipunan. This was the secret society founded on July 7, 1892, the day the decree of Rizal’s exile “to one of the southern islands” was published in the Gaceta de Manila.

 

In truth, the roots of separatist ideas reached deeper into the past.

 

On Dec. 12, 1896, in preparing his defense against the charge of rebellion, Rizal acknowledged these roots: “Separatist ideas have existed in the Philippines for many years. In this century alone there occurred many uprisings: Those of Novales, Cuesta, Apolinario, in the Ilocos and Pangasinan, of the regiment of the Pampangos, of Cavite and again that of Pangasinan in 1884.”

 

Novales was Capt. Andres Novales, a Spanish mestizo who led a revolt in 1823 and declared himself “Emperor of the Philippines.” His armed uprising was foiled and he was executed.

 

Cuesta was Lt. Jose Cuesta, another Spanish mestizo who, in 1854, rebelled and declared the country’s independence from Spain. He was also captured and then hanged.

 

Apolinario, on the other hand, was Apolinario de la Cruz, more popularly known as Hermano Pule, a native of Lucban, whose movement called the Cofradia de San Jose attracted thousands of followers in Tayabas, Laguna, Batangas and Cavite. They were suspected of being heretics and subversives and were attacked in 1841 on the slopes of Mt. San Cristobal in Tayabas. Pule was captured, shot and quartered.

 

Early conquest years

 

Going back farther, down to the early conquest years, the sons and relatives of Rajah Matanda, Lakandula and Rajah Soliman attempted in 1574 to separate from the Spaniards and regain leadership over their ancient domains.

 

Thirteen years later, Magat Salamat and Agustin de Legazpi led the so-called “Revolt of the Lakans (1587-88)” to drive away the Spaniards. Both attempts failed.

 

The uprisings were easily suppressed. They were not based “on the necessity of the whole nation,” a principal reason, according to Rizal, why they failed.

 

There was yet no clear idea of nation, no national sentiment that could galvanize disparate ethnolinguistic communities into a united yet widespread struggle for independence. Rizal changed all that and gave the idea of independent nationhood moral clarity.

 

Social order

 

Rizal’s choice of means were words. When Filipinos were falling for the line that our culture was nonexistent before the arrival of Spain, he found Antonio de Morga’s “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas” (Events in the Philippine Isles), first published in 1609, and annotated it to emphasize the richness and liveliness of our pre-colonial past.

 

In “Noli Me Tangere” (The Social Cancer), published in 1887, Rizal took the bold step of laying bare the cancerous present by accurately depicting everyday events under the velvet heel of Spanish oppression, leading up to “El Filibusterismo” (The Reign of Greed), which came out in 1891, his call to revolution.

 

And in “Las Filipinas Dentro de Cien Años” (The Philippines a Century Hence), Rizal lightly parted the veil of the future to give a glimpse of the direction toward which the country was heading.

 

In these works, Rizal created a climate of opinion that questioned the existing social order. If Spain, after more than 300 years of colonial rule, had nothing more to offer than tears and chains for the indios, it was time for the Filipinos to separate from her by regaining their freedom and establishing their own nation.

 

Rizal clearly laid out the historical basis for independence in Las Filipinas Dentro de Cien Años: If Spain would not introduce equitable laws and sincere reforms to assimilate Filipinos then he predicted that “the Philippines one day will declare herself inevitably and unmistakably independent.”

 

Peace or destruction?

 

It is true that the national hero emphasized education as the foundation upon which the Filipinos could succeed in developing a fledgling nation. He condemned the 1896 revolution of Bonifacio because Rizal believed that conditions were not ripe for its success.

 

Armed struggle, however, was an option that remained on his mind. On June 19, 1887, his 26th birthday, Rizal wrote to his good friend Ferdinand Blumentritt: “I assure you that I have no desire to take part in conspiracies which seem to me too premature and risky. But if the government drives us to them, that is to say, when no other hope remains to us but to seek our destruction in war, when the Filipinos would prefer to die rather than endure longer their misery, then I will also become a partisan of violent means. The choice of peace or destruction is in the hands of Spain …”

(UPDATE) Bedol: ‘Maguindanao had polls, but documents lost’

(UPDATE) Bedol: ‘Maguindanao had polls, but documents lost’
By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net
Last updated 03:50pm (Mla time) 06/11/2007

MANILA, Philippines — Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol said elections were held in that province on May 14 but that the municipal certificates of canvass and statement of votes had gotten “lost.”

 

Threatened with arrest by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBoC), the controversial election officer appeared at Monday’s hearings on Maguindanao to shed light on the allegedly massive poll fraud committed in the province.

 

Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr. ordered Bedol to meet with Comelec commissioner Nicodemo Ferrer to help the NBoC with its investigation.

 

In an interview with reporters, Bedol denied the provincial certificates of canvass from the province were manufactured.

 

“They were duly executed,” he said.

 

But asked where the municipal certificates of canvass and the statement of votes are, Bedol replied: “These, I don’t know.”

 

He said the documents got “lost” from his office the afternoon of May 29, 2007 before these could be submitted to Manila.

 

“It should have been submitted to [the] office by the municipal board of canvassers,” he said.

 

“A case has to be filed for us to determine who is liable [for the loss],” he added.

 

Bedol said that he has conducted his own investigation but could not pinpoint who took the election documents.

 

“It is possible it was taken by the same people who staged a protest at the provincial capital,” he said.

 

Asked if the people he was referring to could be supporters of a political candidate, Bedol said, “Yes,” but did not say who.

 

Bedol admitted that when he came to Manila on May 25 to appear before the NBoC, he did not have any election documents with him.

 

He claimed he did not appear before the NBoC after that date because the Comelec had not asked him to.

“On May 30, I didn’t appear because I was not given a subpoena,” he insisted. “It was my election officers in the 22 municipalities [who were] given subpoena[s].”

 

“It would be wrong for a field officer to come to Manila without a copy of a directive or a subpoena because you would not be able to reimburse your expenses,” he explained.

 

Asked to describe the elections in Maguindanao, he said it was “generally peaceful.”

 

“Wala namang opposition dun [There was no opposition there],” since candidates in 20 of the 22 20 municipalities ran unopposed candidates.

But he said said he was not in Maguindanao during the “early part of the elections” since he was in Cotabato City.

 

Bedol is also the election supervisor in Shariff Kabunsuan.

 

The poll official welcomed the investigation being led by Task Force Maguindanao on whether massive fraud was committed in the province.

 

“Cheating has to be established by evidence. Unless that is proven, there is presumption of regularity,” he said, noting that the claim of teachers who appeared on television saying there were no elections “cannot hold water.”

 

Bedol will stay in Manila unless ordered to go back to his province.

Originally posted at 12:42pm

Documentary on Bayan Muna premieres on Independence Day

INQUIRER.net
Last updated 02:06pm (Mla time) 06/11/2007

MANILA, Philippines — A documentary film on Bayan Muna (People First) will premiere on Tuesday, Independence Day at the Mag:net Café along Katipunan Road in Quezon City, the leftist party-list group said Monday.

 

The film, “Sulo ng Bagong Pulitika” (Torch of New Politics), is produced by Southern Tagalog Exposure.

 

Along with the Bayan Muna documentary, the 5:30 p.m. showing will also feature “Hustisya” (Justice), a video documentary about the human rights situation in the Bicol Region produced by the Bicol Xpress.

 

Admission is free.

MARKING INDEPENDENCE DAY.

A Vendor sells Philippine flags along Roxas Boulevard in Manila to be used for the celebration of Philippine Independence Day. INQUIRER/Ryan Lim

Need for architecture criticism

Need for architecture criticism
By Augusto Villalon
Inquirer
Last updated 00:56am (Mla time) 06/11/2007

 

MANILA, Philippines – It takes training to be able to look at architecture critically, to see the appropriateness of urban spaces and structures to the functions they were designed to serve, and to objectively point out successes and failures.

 

The History, Theory and Criticism Studio Laboratory of the University of the Philippines College of Architecture, UP Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts, and UP Architecture Forum student organization launched the first Honrado R. Fernandez Competition for Architectural Criticism, an essay competition analyzing any characteristic of the designed environment.

 

 

 

The university-wide essay competition was named in honor of the late architect Honrado Fernandez, who was Upca’s former dean and a pioneer in architectural criticism.

 

 

 

The project introduces architectural criticism among students, encourages them to develop a critical eye toward urban spaces and monumental buildings, and most important, teaches them that architecture is primarily meant to serve people and to provide an envelope that not only shelters but improves the quality of life in harried Philippine cities.

 

 

 

The six finalists were Geronimo Cristobal Jr. and Ma. Emmanuelle Nicola Berbano from the College of Arts and Letters, and Christian Immanuel Cruz, Guillermo Lorenzo Fuertes, Francis Lanuza and David Samuel Ty from the College of Architecture.

 

 

 

Four were selected winners. Tied in third place were Berbano (“Where the Sidewalk Ends: An Essay on Why it Shouldn’t,” a critique of Manila’s sidewalk system) and Fuertes (“Crass and Class, ” a piece on the Highway 54 commercial complex on Shaw Boulevard). Second place went to Lanuza for “Pearls from Ashes” (an evaluation of the Gawad Kalinga housing project).

 

 

 

Ty garnered the top prize for his critique on Filipino housing, “Hardin ng Rosas: From Filipino House to Filipino Housing.”

 

 

 

Berbano writes, “Larry Alcala must have drawn Quezon City into being. The streets are indeed a Slice of Life.” All urban life happens on the street where “walking is anything but pleasurable.” He notices that “the most densely populated areas are the least people-friendly,” where parked cars displace people on the sidewalks. “Where did the sidewalk go? Our streets connect places, but not people.” Vehicles have the run of Manila, he writes, threatening the pedestrian. He laments the lack of pedestrian-friendly places in the city.

 

 

 

Fuertes begins his critique on an Edsa structure with, “A silent epidemic is spreading throughout the metro. A trend as provocatively amusing as it is poignantly undermining social taste. The crass consumerism incited by the billboards in our major thoroughfares has been interpreted by some colleagues in the design community as a license to kill (taste). Our urban landscape is slowly turning into the meta-future of ‘Bladerunner’ and ‘Minority Report.’ An anarchical orgy of mixed signals, visual cues that pertain to all forms of consumerism replete in all its varying degrees of grandiosity and scale, all directed to the na¡ve public.”

 

 

 

New lease

 

 

 

Lanuza evaluates a Gawad Kalinga housing project in the notorious Baseco compound of the Manila Port Area. The writer says the character of the development changed drastically after Gawad Kalinga rebuilt the houses leveled by a disastrous fire that “gave it new lease on life.”

 

“As a cynical professor once quipped, disaster ushers in some much-needed transformation. A fire of not so long ago razed a huge section of the district; calls of the homeless prompted both President Jimmy Carter’s Habitat for Humanity and Tony Meloto’s Gawad Kalinga (GK) to come to their rescue. Soon, both parties were building away in Baseco.

 

When compared, Habitat’s design seemed to have an edge with its spacious, post-modern, fiber-cement row houses boasting two floors. All GK had were diminutive, single-story row houses, that instead had pretty pastel hues. But occupancy told a different story; it seemed people were happier, more sociable and way more organized in the GK site. What could be the reason? There must be something wrong in the ideology of a “great” movement such as Habitat, something more than just the architecture.

 

“If both concepts of Habitat and GK were to be compared, the latter seems to follow a deeper logic regarding what people need,” Lanuza says. “Simply put, Habitat builds aptly designed houses, no more and no less. Their mission, while entrenched in charity, is as simple as – if you build it, and since they need it, they will come. In this aspect, GK went a step further to include comprehensive site development, complete facilities, social services, livelihood projects, even an ecological plan. These projects were not mere afterthoughts; they were ingrained in the whole community concept. True, there were inadequacies in design of the GK houses (space, particularly). But the architectural shortfalls were aptly compensated with the gains of being able to live in a good neighborhood. Sounds too ideological, but it works; the behavior and sociability of the homeowners says it all.”

 

 

 

Ty, the top winner, looks at the Hardin ng Rosas housing development in the University of the Philippines Diliman campus that “express[es] a distinctly Filipino response to the 21st-century need for mass housing. It is a project that is oriented toward traditional Filipino values while simultaneously addressing modern concerns and sensibilities.”

 

 

 

The spaces in the low-rise walkup are an organized manner of a traditional bahay kubo, the Philippine house on stilts, where corner posts define an open, multi-use ground level covered by the small private family dwelling area above it.

 

“The [ground level] of a typical apartment building in the development is a public space, which normally functions as an area where the residents perform their daily chores that require larger-than-average breathing space such as the washing and drying of laundry. In some occasions, it also serves as a playground for the local children to play in within the purview of their parents, away from elements that might seek to endanger them, ensuring a safe and secure environment. This design actually evokes the iconography and concept of the traditional and ubiquitous Filipino house, the bahay kubo, as likewise, the lower levels serve as spaces for practical use while the living spaces are situated above ground level. From a distant perspective, the apartment building even appears to be standing on stilts.”

 

 

 

Philippine lifestyle is attuned to traditional Philippine architecture, the writer says, that the open spaces under rural houses have always been where neighbors gathered, children played, and where household or farm chores are done.

 

 

 

In the housing development Ty examines, the open ground floor of the apartment blocks responds to the “nature of the Filipino as an inherently social being (even more so than your average person), as the concept of bayanihan signifies. Residents of the complexes are then encouraged to reflect this Filipino sensibility, keeping them from being isolated and alienated despite living in an urbanized environment. They are now able to mingle and socialize with each other without having to leave their so-called backyard.”

 

 

 

It is a pity that lack of space prevents reprinting the winning entries in full. Each insightful piece examines urban issues that, unanswered or unresolved, prevent an improvement in the quality of daily Manila life. Each piece shows how appreciation for traditional Philippine architectural concepts, not western ones, reinforces our shared comfort zones and remains relevant to our contemporary way of life.

Ingenious savings plan for urban poor in QC

By Margaux Ortiz
Inquirer
Last updated 05:26am (Mla time) 06/11/2007

MANILA, Philippines — The Quezon City government has come up with an ingenious savings scheme to enable urban poor beneficiaries of the city’s socialized housing program in Project 4 to pay their monthly amortizations.

 

Under the “Impok-Pabahay” scheme, the 160 beneficiaries of the Escopa Resettlement Project will be provided with “alkansyang bahay” (homebanks) to encourage them to pay their housing obligations through a planned savings program.

 

Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said each beneficiary would be urged to set aside P57 daily for the alkansyang bahay to pay the monthly amortizations ranging from P1,200 to P1,900.

 

“Each specially-designed homebank will be opened only during a designated collection date with the key entrusted to the homeowners’ president,” Belmonte said, explaining that the city has entered into a partnership with the National Housing Authority (NHA) for the implementation of the program.

 

Belmonte added, “The program is aimed at instilling the Filipino value of ‘pag-iimpok’ (saving for the rainy days) among beneficiaries.”

 

To date, the housing program has benefited about 3,000 families, including those from the Smokey Mountain area.

 

Belmonte said he pushed for the creation of the Quezon City Housing and Urban Renewal Authority (HURA) to implement the city government’s housing program for more than one million urban poor residents.

 

The Escopa Resettlement Project, established in 2003, was HURA’s first project to address the acute housing shortage in Quezon City.

 

Belmonte inaugurated HURA’s second project in Barangay Vasra in the Project 6 area last May.

 

Belmonte said two five-story buildings in the area were constructed to improve the quality of life of urban poor people under his “Quality Community” idea.

 

“We aim to transform squatter communities throughout the city into a decent place conducive for everyday living,” Belmonte said in an earlier statement.

 

Each building holds 80 condominium-type units with a floor area of 21 square meters each. The average cost of each unit is P425,000, according to the mayor.

 

He added that the monthly amortization would depend on the floor level of the condo that the beneficiaries will occupy.

Supreme Court marks 106th anniversary doing good works

By Leila Salaverria
Inquirer
Last updated 06:37am (Mla time) 06/11/2007

MANILA, Philippines — There will be no balloons or confetti when the Supreme Court marks its 106th anniversary on Monday. Instead of the traditional parade, the justices and employees had begun reaching out to the homeless, the sick, the destitute and the disenfranchised as early as last May in support of the anniversary theme, “Service to the People.”

 

Early in June, Chief Justice Reynato Puno took part in painting houses, paving walkways and building plant boxes at the Baseco Compound in Manila’s Tondo area, a beneficiary of the Gawad Kalinga project.

Puno also graced a birthday party in the depressed community, which is being rebuilt after it was razed to the ground in a 2004 fire.

 

 

Supreme Court employees also raised funds to purchase materials to build at least one house.

“We have seen the worst but we have also seen the best in the Filipino. This is truly serving the poor, the disadvantaged and the powerless,” Puno told court employees and Gawad Kalinga members, as he pledged continued support for the Baseco project.
Other activities included a visit to the Philippine General Hospital’s pediatric ward led by Justices Leonardo Quisumbing and Alicia Austria-Martinez. Together with about 150 court employees, they distributed toys, clothes and school supplies.

 

Quisumbing said he was happy to visit neighbors of the Supreme Court, while Martinez said the program was a meaningful way to celebrate the high tribunal’s anniversary.

 

Personnel from the Office of the Court Administrator visited jails in Metro Manila to check on conditions there. They also talked with the detainees and received pointers on how to speed up the judicial process.

 

Other court employees held a livelihood program in a Malate barangay (village) razed by fire last year, teaching residents micro businesses so they could have other sources of income. They taught them how to make laundry soap, dish-washing detergent, perfumes and colognes, novelty giveaways and stuffed toys.

 

A visit to the orphanage of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity was also on the agenda. The employees distributed essentials like milk, vitamins and clothes. They also spent the day with the children.

 

Other employees worked with Child Hope Asia Philippines. They gathered 50 street children, treated them to a popular fast food restaurant and gave them clothes.

 

Residents of the Payatas depressed area in Quezon City also benefited from the Supreme Court’s anniversary. Court personnel provided free medical consultations, treatment and distributed free medicine in the community.