Baguio Urban Poor Push for Charter Change
After the impeachment
complaint, the members of the House of Representatives are expected to
deliberate on the 2006 national budget and to start the so-called great
debate on changing the 1987 Constitution. It may interest legislators to
know that the urban poor in Baguio City are calling for charter change,
but of a different kind.
BY LYN V. RAMO
Northern Dispatch
Posted by Bulatlat
BAGUIO CITY — The
urban poor in this city (246 kms from Manila) have taken to the streets to
call for charter change.
But before
pro-charter change national government officials jump for joy, it must be
stressed that the Baguio urban poor are not referring to the 1987
Philippine Constitution but their city’s charter which marked its 96th
year last Sept. 1.
In a rally at the
Kilometer 0 here, Geraldine Cacho, chair emeritus of the Organisasyon
dagiti Nakurapay nga Umili iti Syudad (Ornus, or Organization of the Urban
Poor) said that Sept. 1, 1909 must be considered as the day when
“imperialist encroachment into the Cordillera people’s territory”
happened.
She said that the
Americans drafted the current Baguio Charter and sold Ibaloy (an
indigenous people’s group) lands to foreigners and moneyed families from
the metropolitan cities.
Under the Baguio
Charter, public lands that are alienable and disposable may be
expropriated through the Townsite Sales Application (TSA) system which the
Americans introduced. According to Ornus, the TSA is anti-poor because it
allows the sale of lands only to the highest bidder.
“Kasano a
makatagikua ti dagdaga dagiti nakurapay nga umili iti syudad no ti mismo a
linteg ti mangkuna a saan a mabalin?” (How could the poor acquire
lands in the city when the law says they could not?), Cacho asked.
In the Charter Day
program, Baguio City Mayor Braulio Yaranon said that the city was intended
for only 25,000 people. Almost 100 years later, Baguio’s population has
grown to about 300,000.
During a land
congress of Ornus last Aug. 31, representatives of the city’s urban poor
pushed for an amendment of the Baguio City Charter to scrap the TSA
system. They also called on the local government to award the lands in
urban poor settlements to their actual occupants and to stop the
demolition of urban poor dwellings.
The land congress
discussed the situation of land ownership in the districts occupied by
informal settlers from the provinces. These include three of the most
populated districts, namely Irisan’s Cypress Point, Lime Kiln, San Carlos
and Idugan; District 12’s Kias, Atok Trail, Fort del Pilar, Loakan,
Liwanag and Apugan; and Fairview and Tacay areas. Nordis / Bulatlat
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