Words with twisted worlds

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO
March Fianza

In www.cordilleravoice.com/index.php I read the news written by uncle Joseph Zambrano that talked about “lack of school teachers, classrooms, chairs and textbooks” that remained the perennial problems of public schools every opening of classes.

The news article also said that there are a lot of teacher applicants but the problem is that there are no positions in the schools to be filled.

This is hard to believe. Of course the items to be filled by teacher-applicants are there because these are requested to be included in the general appropriations act annually.

Otherwise, if there are no requests for new items for teachers in Congress, then colleges and universities might as well stop enrolling students who dream of becoming public school teachers one day.

This has been the problem decades ago, yet no solution is seen. How come? Is it because authorities refuse to look for answers or is there something that prevents the problems from getting resolved?

I heard in the past of a long line of teacher-applicants. But the one who gets hired is not the most qualified but the one who has the right “backer,” or one who can put up the right amount.
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Filipino lawmakers and those attached to Malacanang cabinet offices have the tendency to mimic the words and phrases used by their counterparts in the US government then “bastardize” their true meanings.

First, the term “sustainable development” was used and abused. It was how concerned government agencies wanted management of environment to be, only to find out that it cannot be effected in a corruptible society where anything can be compared to bananas and have a price too.

During the controversial construction of the San Roque mega dam along the Agno River in Dalupirip, Itogon and San Manuel, Pangasinan, a report by the National Power Corporation described the few indigenous farmers deemed to be affected by the project as mere “forest dwellers.”

Of course, the three farmer-families were not “monkeys” as imagined by some, just because they survived out of the bounty of the Agno River and Dalupirip forest, but their number was considered as insignificant and so they can just be uprooted from their forest dwelling merely by the intimidating sound of big Japanese construction machines.

Lately, I heard congressmen relate the terms “informal settlers” to “squatters” on both public and private lands. But these words have two distinct worlds.

Informal settlers in the US are, due to poverty, those forced to settle temporarily in vacant or vacated places such as parks, abandoned buildings and underground passages, and are very mobile. Today, they are in a corner street. Tomorrow, they move somewhere.

The real informal settlers in this country are those who, due to poverty, migrate to other places to seek employment and are forced to construct dwellings on vacant lots near their places of work.

In the City Camp and MRR barangays in Baguio, the first informal settlers were believed to be those employed by government and the government-owned Manila Rail Road in the early 50s, hence, the name of the place. Squatters came later.

Other informal settlers are those who are booted out from their lands by force of law or become landless and homeless due to land grabbing, and sometimes pushed to vacate because of creeping development.

Still others migrate after being forced away from their lands by natural calamities such as floods and landslides. In La Trinidad, landslide victims at the Little Kibungan sitio of barangay Puguis became informal settlers on a land owned by the Benguet State University.

On the other hand, squatters under Pinoy standards, have money to occupy and construct buildings on public and private lands. Most if not all are migrants are landowners from where they originated, are employed in some way, and have other properties hidden somewhere.

In many cases, squatters are tolerated by the government upon the intervention of politicians who have reservations on the usefulness of squatters in the future.

In other cases, squatters are government itself. There lies the conflict that separates the worlds of informal settlers and squatters. Government cannot qualify as an informal settler because it has all the means to buy land and build on it.

But government can be a squatter like anybody who, without permission, occupies lands that does not belong to him.

Take the case of the building that was constructed on a river bank near the city-owned Asin hydro in Tuba. It was built by the City of Baguio with the people’s worth P10 Million that was paid by the city treasurer to the contractor.

It was constructed with no building permit because it stands on a river easement within the ancestral land claim of a private individual. By any definition, the building is squatting on private property.

But that is nothing because that can be resolved through a dialogue. What is wrong that may not be remedied is that the mayor then who ordered its construction signed a management contract to cover the building. It appears that the city council then did not lawfully authorize the mayor to enter into a contract.

Hence, the city now does not recognize the contract that it authored and therefore there is no basis for collecting dues higher than what is written in that contract from people who have been looking after the building and other city properties.

If in case the contract becomes valid later, and the city council makes the necessary authorization for the mayor, then the management will have to be recognized who will then have to pay the city based on what is written in the contract.

If the contract will be honored by both sides, then messed up things could be fixed. If not, then we may be seeing the tip of another graft case involving politicians and city hall department heads.

I think I strayed from the main topic of defining the words “informal settlers” and “squatters.” Another government squatter is the city water tank constructed inside the titled property of Ibaloi landowner Kalomis beside the Busol forest. That is another story. – marchfianza777@yahoo.com