By PNA
GENERAL SANTOS CITY–The city government has documented around 14,000 “informal settler families” (ISF) that need relocation or resettlement within the next decade.
Mary Ann Bacar, head of the City Housing and Land Management Office (CHLMO), said Friday the figure represents households that are currently settled in identified disaster danger zones, prohibited areas and lands facing legal problems.
Bacar said the ISFs are mainly located on banks, high-risk foreshore sites, road-right-of-ways, and illegally-occupied private properties within the city’s 26 barangays.
“The profiling of the affected families are ongoing in the affected sites in coordination with the barangay councils,” she said.
Bacar said the city government needs at least 300 hectares to properly relocate the identified ISFs. She said the city, which has a land area of around 49,000 hectares, has available resources for relocation based on their inventory public lands in the area.
However, she noted that some of these lands have pending reversion cases and claims as ancestral domains.
Bacar acknowledged that the acquisition and development of relocation sites for the ISFs would require “billions of pesos” but said the city government has already been working on it in a progressive manner.
For instance, she said Mayor Ronnel Rivera had endorsed a funding of around PHP100 million for the relocation program under the city’s supplemental budget for the last quarter of the year.
She said the allocation was intended for the purchase of around 20 hectares of relocation site for the ISFs.
She added that the city is also looking at asking President Rodrigo Duterte to allow the city government to utilize public lands for relocation areas.
The city’s shelter plan, meanwhile, is pending approval by the Sangguniang Panlungsod.
She said the plan, crafted through technical assistance from the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, serves as the roadmap of the city’s housing sector for the next 10 years.
“It sets various interventions, including cooperation with various government agencies and the private sector to effectively address our housing backlog,” she added.
