MANILA – The youth group Anakbayan marched to Mendiola Bridge near the Presidential Palace as it staged a protest against the neglect of typhoon Haiyan survivors by the Philippine government.
Anakbayan also condemned the government’s rehabilitation plan for typhoon-stricken areas, dubbing it a ‘sham’ and ‘will not benefit the poor’.
“The Aquino administration’s emphasis on the Public-Private Partnership as part of rehabilitation efforts is enough to send alarm bells ringing. We fear that rehabilitation in Yolanda-stricken areas will simply be turned into new investment opportunities for giant corporations, especially foreign ones” Vencer Crisostomo, national chairperson of Anakbayan, said in a statement to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
He cited the ‘no-build zone’ policy as an example, calling it ‘legalized, large-scale landgrabbing’ for tourist developers and other corporations. In Tacloban City in particular, House Bill 3640 mandates a ‘Tacloban City Economic Zone.’
According to Crisostomo, the ‘no-build zone’ will be used as an excuse to clear communities for the sake of the planned Economic zone. He said the government’s focus on loan schemes for ‘rebuilding jobs’ will only benefit big businesses, and not ordinary farmers and fisherfolk.
He said that farmers who are ‘share-croppers’, or those who do not have their own fields and work in others’, will not be even able to avail of such loans. Meanwhile, those with small plots of land will be unable to pay back such debts.
The bloated budget for the rehabilitation plan also shows that it will merely be used to reward administration allies, according to Crisostomo. While the damage wrought by the super typhoon is pegged at P36 billion, the total rehabilitation budget is P361 billion.
He said that the huge discrepancy between actual damages and the rehabilitation budget will go primarily to overpriced infrastructure projects, benefitting both politicians and big businessmen who are close to the President.
Crisostomo said the nomination of former senator Ping Lacson and Eton Properties chief executive officer Danilo Antonio is no coincidence. Lacson is known to be close to ‘tycoons’, or Filipino-Chinese big businessmen, while Eton Properties is owned by another tycoon, Lucio Tan.
The youth group instead called on the Aquino administration to heed demands by peoples’ organizations in Eastern Visayas, such as the immediate release of P40,000 for all affected families, the scrapping of the no-build zone, and financial assistance for the livelihood of farmers and fisherfolk.
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