BY NOEL SALES BARCELONA
Bulatlat
Members of the Concerned Organizations Opposed to Transfer, Layoff, Demolition and Privatization for Quezon City Central Business District (Contra-CBD) staged a picket rally at 5 p.m. today along Philcoa in Quezon City to oppose the proposed Quezon City Central Business District (QC-CBD) covering 250.6 hectares of prime lands.
Government employees from the National Food Authority, Bureau of Animal Industry, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and residents from Brgy. Central joined the picket. They said this is just one of the series of protests that they would launch to stop the grandiose project.
Calling the project “a monster that would devour their homes and livelihood”, protesters said that only big businessmen, corrupt government officials and foreign finance institutions World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) would benefit from this pet project of Mayor Sonny Belmonte and Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
“They are very much willing to sacrifice the homes and the livelihood of more than 24,000 families living in those areas, not to mention the thousands of government employees who will lose their jobs because of the privatization of lands where their offices are currently located,” said the group’s spokesperson Santiago Dasmarinas, who is an employee of the National Food Authority.
The protesters said lands where the Office of the Ombudsman, Sugar Regulation Administration, National Food Authority, Mines and Geosciences Bureau, Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau and Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife, National Power Corporation, Bureau of Internal Revenue, National Printing Office, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas-Quezon City office, Land Transportation Office and Land Transportation Franchise and Regulatory Board are located will be sold to private real estate companies such as JG Summit, SM Holdings, Inc., Ayala Land Corporation and the newly formed real estate development company of airline and bank mogul, Lucio Tan.
In the project’s blueprint, said Dasmarinas, the QC-CBD will be divided into five districts: Triangle Exchange (covers 54.3 hectares), Residences (39.7 hectares), Downtown Hub (54.1 hectares), The Emporium (37.9 hectares), and Commons (19.8 hectares).
“Public hospitals would be affected too with the planned merger of government hospitals in the area,” added Dasmariñas.
“Parks and leisure places, medium and high-rise residence and business buildings, and business and technology parks will rise on these places. With these, the government promises to give jobs and shelter for the residents of Quezon City but these are all lies. How can a poor resident of QC afford to live in a condominium unit or a townhouse? And most of the businesses that will be built there are business process outsourcing firms. How can an elementary or a high school graduate be employed there? Only one thing is for sure, the QC-CBD is a pest for the poor but profit for big businesses,” Dasmariñas ended. (Bulatlat)
