NEWS: Flexi fare ordinance not yet acted upon – Rellon

oct 21

Tagum City Mayor Allan Rellon said yesterday that the City Council as a whole has not yet acted upon the proposed executive-initiated ordinance putting as flexible the motorcycle fare based on the current prices of gasoline.

“We are still waiting for it,” he said in an interview at Tahanan ng Punong Lalawigan, the official residence of the governor inside the Capitol complex at Mankilam, Tagum City where guests, mediamen and provincial officials with Press Secretary Jesus Dureza took their lunch after the holding of local National Press Club activities yesterday.

Last October 8 the new measure passed the first reading and was referred to the committees of laws and of public facilities.

On the other hand, as to what is dubbed as urban poor ordinance, he said that its proponent Councilor Nicandro “Nickel” Suaybaguio has still to fully introduce the measure.

Observers earlier said that Suaybaguio’s measure may yet draw another controversy as it plans to suspend for five years the issuance of approval of permits and requirements to urban poor housing.

Last week, the city’s purok ordinance on motion for reconsideration was junked anew by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan for being “legally infirmed”.

Under the proposed ordinance entitled “An Ordinance Imposing the Regulation of Fare Rates of Motorized Tricycles for Hire (MTH) of the City of Tagum” fare rates would vary based on the set schedule.

If gasoline prices per liter (gpl) range P20 to 29.99 it will have P6 for regular fare and P4 for student or senior citizen; P30 to P39.99 gpl- P7 regular fare, P5 student/senior citizen; P40 to 49.99 gpl- P8 regular fare, P6 student/senior citizen; P50 to P59.99 gpl- P9 regular fare, P7 student/senior citizen; P60 to P69.99 gpl- P10 regular fare, P8 student/senior citizen; P70 to P79.99 gpl- P11 regular fare, P9 student/senior citizen; P80 to P89.99 gpl- P12 regular fare, P10 student/senior citizen; P90 to P99.99 gpl- P13 regular fare, P11 student/senior citizen; and P100 and above gpl- P14 regular fare, P12 student/senior citizen.

The fare rates are good for the first three kilometers of the Central District from where the passenger originated, and would have an additional of P1 for every kilometer or every fraction thereof. (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News) http://ruralurbanews.blogspot.com

Filed under: allan rellon, councilor suaybaguio, tagum, tagum city, tagum city councilors, tagum city flexi fare, tagum city hall, tagum councilors, tagum urban poor, tagum city councilors, tagum flexi fare ordinance, tagum tricycle fare, vice mayor allan rellon

The tricycle fare increase in Tagum City

sept 19

The City Legal Officer Roland Tumanda made the inevitable reason loud and clear to quell murmurs around on the possibillity of holding in abeyance the present P7 motorcycle fare since prices of oil products have been already decreasing over the last two weeks. The increased P10 fare will continue for Tagum City despite the price rollbacks.

Since it’s the Tagum City Federation of Tricycle Transport and Services Cooperative (Tafettrasco) that would be benefited, its act of volunteering to distribute the taripas is a just a natural reaction knowing that tricycle drivers and operators have then been losing when gasoline prices were still about a double of the January price level, as well as due to the unfair competition posed by the colorum habal-habals which have been snatching their passengers in the city’s streets during sunny days.

“Unless the ordinance is amended,” Atty. Tumanda said to belabor a point that the fare could still be decreased to attune with current oil prices.

It’s good that there seems to be a quick price reflex now in the country’s deregulation regime in the oil industry but this positive news about price rollback is so scarce vis-avis the many instances of price increase.

We hope there will also be quick reflex mechanism in our local legislation. It seems to us that on the average it would take us one month and a half to two months before legislation is finally implemented after passing through the local and provincial legislative processes. But we start to count on the date of approval of the ordinance. In particular, the city ordinance on fare increase was unanimously enacted last July 28 and if taripas would be issued today, it takes us a total of one month and 21 days to have it implemented.

However, the delay on this fare increase ordinance seems to occur at the provincial level.

Nevertheless, despite what appear as discreet dilatory processes occurring at the provincial level for this piece of legislation, the city councilors who all voted yes to the ordinance should still be congratulated- for increasing fare at a time of decreasing oil prices. Thanks for the delay.  (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News)

Filed under: tagum city, tagum city hall, tagum city councilors, tagum councilors, tagum, atty. tumanda, councilor joey millan, councilor francisco remitar, mylene baura, councilor alfredo pagmilao, councilor suaybaguio, councilor allan zulueta, mayor rey uy, tagum tricycle fare increase, atty. tumanda tagum

Barack Obama is CO

sept 5

BLOGISTA

By Cha Monforte

Well, Barack Obama was a community organizer (CO) you know. Before he went to excel in Harvard law school and after graduating from Columbia University in 1983 with a major in political science, Obama worked as a financial consultant in New York City . But he was bored—and drawn to work as a CO for three years in Chicago . There he organized African blacks, the grassroots and average people like those living in the ghettos, the urban poor in US, for many causes including public housing.

Today’s “biggest celebrity in the world”, to borrow a counter-spin of Republican nominee John McCain, has admitted that his exposure as a CO has most impact on him as politician. Analysts say that’s the reason why Obama became an effective legislator and an audacious public speaker. I have much confidence that Obama could win for the US presidency by November.

Now if Obama could be given a say on the proposed ordinance of the Tagum City Councilor Nicandro Suaybaguio Jr who wants to stop urban poor housing for five years in the city, I bet, the front-running Democratic presidential nominee would easily say, “Yes, the urban poor can”. He will thumb down Nickel’s wayward measure that he would submit for readings at the city council by Monday.

Vice President Noli de Castro, the country’s housing czar, should he come across with Suaybaguio’s measure, would also probably say, “hindi naman dapat ganon… OK, tingnan natin yan”. Tingni!

Let’s see how wayward really is Suaybaguio’s measure. He says that he will craft yet the city’s housing code (or is he referring this to comprehensive shelter plan which took about seven years for the Davao City Council to fully refine, complete and approve?). So there, even without the housing code, which will show the acute housing backlog in the city, which is about 28,000 families requiring at least 280 hectares, Suaybaguio is already making a shortcut by stopping the urban poor to make contribution in addressing the housing problem in the city.

If Suaybaguio’s wayward measure isn’t stopped in independent nominal voting in the way the nematicide-banning measure of Councilor Joedel Caasi was killed by the majority last Monday, then it would pass without extensive study and research, to borrow the reasons of Councilors Rey Salve and SK prexy Cyril Muring in frustrating Caasi.

The city councilors, whom I believe could still independently rise to occasion of erroneous and insufficient measure, wherever it came from, should be appraised that Suaybaguio’s measure is grossly insufficient in substance for taking wrong assumptions. It’s not the form as there’s always easy template for it.

When it defers the issuance of the approval of all documents relating urban poor subdivision, it right away closes the city’s door to access national socialized housing funds such as CMP of the strengthened Social Housing Finance Corp, MMP of NHA, GLAD of Pag-ibig Fund, congressional funds and the like. It also automatically bars other alternative social housing schemes for the poor espoused by Churches such as the Habitat and Gawad Kalinga and by the civil society and cooperatives.

In our series, we’ve always emphasized the need for counterparting, convergence and partnership among stakeholders and the combination of various shelter modes and strategies in addressing the city’s acute housing backlog. The city government could not just do it alone, which is otherwise misplaced as an assumption underlying in Suaybaguio’s measure.

Housing developers could not also do it alone even as they cater only to the middle and high-end markets, and not to the informal sector. But if developers could have the heyday in buying lands within the 5-year deferment period, expect more price speculations among landowners in the city, assuming that they could seize good market from the middle-and-up sectors. This could potentially trigger rise of the selling prices of even agricultural lands for which after the five-year prohibition period it can further bar the urban poor from owning affordable offsite lands via CMP.

Suaybaguio’s measure would also mean the stoppage of onsite CMP projects in the city. For putting no exemption on this, urban poor already occupying lands in city centers will have no chance at all to buy the lands they occupy via the CMP during the deferment period. (For online edition, visit my blog at: http://cha4t.wordpress.com)

Filed under: councilor suaybaguio, councilor nicandro suaybaguio jr, tagum city officials, um tagum scandal

Leave them alone, Nickel

Sept 2

BLOGISTA

By Cha Monforte

Tagum City Councilor Nicandro Suaybaguio is missing the character of the landless urban poor to endure. Being landless, what is most important to them, first and foremost, is the land on where they could use as base for surviving even for barest existence. That so-called squatters could even endure to live above odorous esteros or even on danger zones, home along the riles, points a fact of their capacity to endure and withstand hostile and risky environments. They have high tolerance level and shock-absorbing capacity amid this urban nightmare.

So long as the urban poor could have space to live on, they could endure living even in a rawest swath of land they have negotiated or bought – sans the good roads, water, electricity, drainage and other facilities. The best Suaybaguio can do now is to leave or, I intentionally say, live them alone.

That former marshy land adjoining on where the Agora market of Cagayan de Oro City now stands or that urban poor area near the city’s pier just show how a collective labor of the landless people can improve the land they occupied without much government intervention. First they occupied over a marshy-muddy land. For years of living, urban poor families slowly filled up their respective lots out from their own discards and solid waste, mixed it with gravel they bought occasionally. Their organization also at times tapped discards from barangay constructions.

From time to time, they got sand and gravel and basic community facilities donated by city councilors and mayors in various administrations and congressman, and accessed a small site development grants and assistance from NGOs. But they dug their own canals connecting to each other while each of them took care of their septic tanks. So many lusongs and bayanihans ni Juan were made for their road network.

These occurred while each of them progressively improved their own homes, from makeshifts connected with bamboo foot bridges, to semi-concrete and concrete ones when their daughters have already become Japayukis. Or betting fathers themselves bought hollow blocks or plywoods after winning masiao which was popular in the city in the 80s.

After over decade of progressive type of site and home development, the formerly bakhawan and katug-an area in CDO has now emerged as fully developed subdivision near to the urban dwellers’ places of employment and livelihood- the terminal, market and pier. It’s compliments of the more counterparting by the urban poor, while various city government administrations saved and funneled their scarce resources for the people’s housing to more land acquisitions and site development to its own pet resettlement projects like the sprawling Macanhan relocation. There are more of these in the country which even the United Nations Programme for Human Settlements (UN-HABITAT) recognized as one of practical housing solutions.

For engaging in CMP, congressional housing, direct purchase and other collective land acquisition undertakings, the organized urban poor are actually helping the city and national governments in solving the city’s own acute housing backlog for at least 28,000 families requiring 280 hectares of land. That since the 90s urban poor housing projects had accomplished at least 64 hectares securing tenure of least 3,301 households is feat solving a fourth of that backlog problem.

The best that Suaybaguio can also do now is to be happy for such lands negotiated and bought out from the urban poor initiative. They might have successfully accessed the CMP and congressional funds, but diskarte na nila yan. Now you feign in wanting to develop first the existing ones through provision of basic services and facilities? It’s certainly Good Samaritan intention. But the basic question is: does the city government has enough resources to improve the sites of existing ones that it does not own while staring the housing backlog to build up outside for the next five years?

But considering the high housing backlog of the city or the high number of those in need of a housing unit, horizontal development than vertical development is what the city needs now in its first order of priorities in housing its own people.

Such horizontal development would mean allocation of funds for land acquisitions intended for the informal sector. The need for landbanking is most urgent now while prices of raw lands from inherently speculating landowners are still low in near fringes.

I say it again to Kons. Nickel, just leave and live the urban poor alone to make their own diskarte in developing the existing sites they own and in negotiating for more lands through CMP and other modes to contribute in helping solved the acute housing backlog in the city. The city government cannot just do it alone in solving this acute housing problem in the city.

What is best now for the city government is to focus developing its own resettlement sites and buy more lands for socialized housing purposes, which have more political value add-ons, than funneling its precious resources to site development to existing ones whose residents and members have more political loyalty to the ones who have given them the break into owning lots to call their own in the first place, like Congressman Arrel Olano.

If the reelectionist Suaybaguio would his way in his proposed measure of deferring the accreditation and approval of new urban poor housing applications for 5 years, he will surely be losing tens and thousands of votes from the urban poor, and I bet, even from those in the existing ones he wants to help as land counts the most than any thing else for among most of the highly enduring urban poor. (For online edition, visit my blog at: http://cha4t.wordpress.com)

Filed under: councilor suaybaguio, councilor nicandro suaybaguio jr, um tagum scandal

Contributing to the problem than the solution

BLOGISTA

By Cha Monforte

I have interviewed Councilor Nicandro “Nickel” Suaybaguio to get his side on his proposed measure of giving a temporary closed-door policy for the urban poor. For being a scion of a landed family in the city, I couldn’t fault him for using the landowner’s vantage point of seeing things in urban poor housing.

But even that stupid Lina Law, in the words of a national columnist, in describing the Urban Development Housing Act (UDHA) of 1992 (RA 7279) has recognized the acute problem of housing the people. The law spells out various shelter modes and schemes and calls for the combination of these to resolve the country’s high housing backlog.

There has been this backlog highlighted since the 90s when UDHA was enacted and it is continuing now even with combination of housing strategies and the creation of the Social Housing Finance Corporation in 2004 from the National Home Mortgage Finance Corp (NHMFC) so that the social housing for the informal and low-income sector will be given a particular focus.

So with Tagum City. It is too suffering from acute housing backlog. In the city’s comprehensive development and land use plan, the projected housing demand for 2010 is 47,383 dwelling units. These are the households who are currently having no lots to call their own, renting, or sharing spaces with their families across all classes and income markets.

Taking this alarming statistics, and multiplying it by the minimum 100 square meter for a lot of each household, Tagum City two years from now would be needing at least 473 hectares of land to house its landless people.

However, for since the low-income class comprised the bulk of the populace (we peg at a mere minimum of 60 percent), the resulting statistics of 28,000 households in need of social housing paints a grave housing problem that needs about, at least 280 hectares of land.

The city’s sub-regional service center function since time immemorial has just attracted a lot of people to live in its territory and has spawned higher in-migration rate and faster urbanization tempo. The sprouting of informal housing settlements along with the squatting of public places such as the danger zones, road right of ways and accretion areas along the city’s creeks and rivers caused by a burgeoned population is just therefore a manifestation, an effect of the strong economic force of the city.

Thanks, the city’s acute housing backlog and urban light and squatting have been addressed since the recent decade and years by various shelter modes such as CMP, cooperative housing, congressional housing of Rep. Arrel Olano and even direct purchase at the own initiative of the landless themselves out from sheer want and necessity.

The 31 urban poor housing projects occupying at least a mere 64 hectares in the city could only house a total of 3,301 households and have effectively secured the tenure of 2,662 households, which is about a high 81-percent occupancy and not the low 60-percent occupancy highlighted by Suaybaguio.

So this is it. In the face of the acute housing backlog of Tagum City (read 280 hectares against the 64 hectares made of informal housing settlements) why knock on the problem of site development and the non-issue of alleged low occupancy, when much has still to be done with the organized initiatives and community-based land acquisition for housing projects being participated by the landless urban poor themselves.

The city government has limited resources to resolve this acute housing problem. So with the debt-ridden national government that from a formerly doleout housing solution exemplified by the wasteful BLISS projects before, it has shifted the paradigm of housing the people through encouragement of community-based housing projects involving the landless urban poor themselves like the CMP.

If the young Suaybaguio could have his way, that is, stopping for five years any new urban poor housing, he is actually contributing to the problem of landlessness than to the solution of it. We have more lands to take as a problem than the roads of the existing ones, while people continue to flock in to the city to live and prices of lands continue to rise. For now, more landbanking is what we need than site development. (For online edition, visit my blog at: http://cha4t.wordpress.com)

Filed under: councilor suaybaguio, bisaya bloggers, bisaya jokes, blogista, um tagum sex scandal

Nickel’s class legislation in the making

sept 1

BLOGISTA

By Cha Monforte

Tagum City Councilor Nicandro “Nickel” Suaybaguio Jr. should not be misunderstood. For proposing an ordinance that seeks to stop new urban poor housing projects in the city, he’s inviting class suits. From the looks of its, Suaybaguio’s proposed ordinance is ostensibly a class legislation. The mere fact that his measure is preventing new housing projects for the landless urban poor from starting for the next five years, he is in effect legislating one policy that discriminates and excludes particularly one class or sector in our society- the landless urban poor.

If the young Suaybaguio would have his way, he will surely be closing the door to the teeming landless urban poor to acquire new land of their own within this long period, while opening up wide the city’s door to housing developers which cater not for the low-income but for the middle class and upscale markets.

His measure is by and large presumptuous on various issues.

First, he said he wants to correct a situation: that the existing 31 urban poor housing projects acquired on various modes have only a combined 60-percent occupancy rate, meaning, there’s still a high 40-percent of lots that have still to be filled up.

Nickel should be apprised that most of these have been acquired or processed under the successful Community Mortgage Program (CMP) of the national government, six through the congressional fund of Congressman Arrel Olano, and three are direct purchase schemes based on negotiations between urban poor organizations and the landowners.

Note that all of these are contracted by urban poor organizations which have juridical personalities of their own. Those lands taken out under CMP are now owned by the beneficiary organization. The city government is not a party to the sale, nor a signatory to the contracts, memoranda of or lease-purchase agreements.

It could therefore not dictate whom to place in the unoccupied lots. It’s the board of directors and general assembly of the beneficiary organization which have the power to substitute recalcitrant and defaulting members and accept new members, and not the city government. These organizations would only accept new qualified members who can pay and assume the old obligations up to the current amortizations and repayments of the existing members.

It the city government wants to place those urban poor families occupying in the city’s road-right-of-ways, danger zones and other public places like along creeks and rivers and those hit by demolitions due to government projects to the unoccupied lots in existing urban poor housing projects, it must first negotiate with these organizations and pay the organizational dues and obligations in behalf of the families to be relocated.

Or the relocatees themselves would have to shoulder the obligations. Urban poor housing after all isn’t free and doleout as the members of these taken-out or on-process projects have already shouldered a lot of expenses including unpaid efforts and time like not being absent during organizational meetings and assemblies.
Making the inadequacies of the existing ones of the already urban poor beneficiaries as the pre-condition for the lifting of the deferment in the issuance of accreditation and approval of development plans of urban poor associations is already giving injustice to the other landless urban poor who have not yet benefited any land acquisition project, government or otherwise. It kills the initiative of the landless urban poor themselves to organize for land tenure purposes. This caveat is a fallacious quid pro quo, a non-legit termination clause of Nickel’s class legislation in the making. (For online edition, visit my blog at: http://cha4t.wordpress.com)

Filed under: councilor suaybaguio, councilor nickel suaybaguio jr, um tagum sex scandal