In QC, squatters victimize lot owners

LAST MONDAY being the day after Mother’s Day, the Kapihan sa Manila at the Diamond Hotel had four mothers as panelists: Inquirer columnist Cory Quirino, Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte, and budding politicians Gwen Pimentel and Toots Ople who both ran for senator in the last elections. Coincidentally, all four belong to the younger generation of political families. Cory Quirino is the granddaughter of President Elpidio Quirino, Joy Belmonte is the daughter of Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, Gwen Pimentel is the daughter of former Sen. Nene Pimentel, and Toots Ople is the daughter of the late Sen. Blas Ople. With them as Kapihan guests were a father, retired Gen. Jose Angel Honrado, head of the Manila International Airport Authority, and a bachelor, James Jimenez, spokesman of the Commission on Elections.

They were not able to talk about motherhood, however. Instead they talked about their different advocacies. Quirino, beautiful enough to be a beauty queen herself, is promoting the coming Miss World Beauty Pageant, Belmonte was peppered with questions about the problems in her city, Pimentel talked about street children that her NGO is helping, and Ople talked about OFWs which her organization is also helping. Honrado talked about the improvements at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, voted recently as the “worst airport in the world,” and Jimenez tried to explain what is happening at the Comelec where a few commissioners are trying to replace the tens of thousands of votes of Lucena, Quezon, residents with their own few votes to unseat the mayor who won in the election and replace her with their own choice, a man who did not even run for mayor.

It is impossible to dwell in detail on what all of them talked about in this limited space, so I will concentrate on Belmonte since she was asked the most questions, and let others write about what the other panelists discussed.

When you talk about Quezon City, the discussion eventually centers on the problem of squatters and the sad plight of property owners. QC is known as the “squatter capital of the Philippines.”

Which city has the biggest number of squatters in the entire country? Quezon City. The excuse given by its officials is that it is a big city and has many vacant spaces. The real reason is that many of its officials are squatter coddlers who tolerate and bring in the squatters to vote for them.

Which city has the highest real estate tax rates in the Philippines? Quezon City.

What is the richest city in the Philippines? Quezon City.

Which city has the biggest bank account? Quezon City.

So why can’t Quezon City solve its squatter problem? The reason given by many other cities and municipalities is that they do not have the funds and the land to provide housing for their squatters. Not Quezon City.

Quezon City has so much money in the bank that its officials are scrambling to put as much of it as they can in their pockets. Recently, Nene Pimentel and a whistleblower exposed at the Kapihan sa Diamond the existence of thousands of ghost employees in the city payroll. Each councilor has between 120 and 130 employees on his payroll. Only 20 to 30 of them are real flesh-and-blood workers, they said. The rest are ghosts. The councilors, or their collectors, get the salaries every month. There are six councilors per district, and there are four districts. So do your arithmetic and come up with how much taxpayers’ money is lost to ghosts every year. There are so many ghosts at QC Hall that it is as scary (to taxpayers) as a cemetery at night.

Belmonte is the presiding officer of the City Council and she approves the payrolls. She said at the Kapihan that the payrolls are now “screened.”

How, by whom and how effective is the “screening” she did not say. The number of employees of each councilor remains the same, however: 120 to 130 each.

What happened to the first three councilors against whom charges were filed? Belmonte did not say either.

That’s not all: Each councilor has a P13 (or P30) million pork barrel for projects. What projects? Each district, consisting of a few square kilometers, has six councilors. Combine their yearly pork barrels and how many waiting sheds, basketball courts, concrete streets and sidewalks, etc., etc. can you build with them? So where is all that money going?

And do you know that even some barangay officials have their own pork barrel? But why are many barangays hosting slums? Why are the creeks not dredged and cleaned? Why is the garbage not collected? Why are there no parks? Why do some streets have no sidewalks? Parts of Tandang Sora have none. Again, where is all that taxpayers’ money going?

What I am driving at is that Quezon City has enough funds to provide its squatters with housing and return the land squatted on to their rightful owners so that they can build their own homes there. Do you know that there are many teachers, clerks, workers who own lots that they paid for in monthly installments with their savings, yet these property owners are homeless, renting basements and shacks, because squatters have taken over their lots? Yet the city government is raising the tax rates on these lots every year. And if the owner fails to pay the taxes, the city sells the property at public auction.

Ask city officials for help in ejecting the squatters and they will answer that the squatters also “have rights.” What about the rights of the property owners? Do lawbreakers like squatters have more rights than taxpayers? What about the laws on property rights?

In exchange for the taxes that citizens pay, isn’t the city government duty-bound to serve the taxpayers and protect their properties?