At least 400,000 squatters blocking key drainage channels of a giant lake on the edge of the Philippine capital need to be uprooted to fix Manila’s flooding crisis, a government official said yesterday.
The squatters are among 1 million people living on the shoreline of Laguna de Bay, which will stay flooded for up to five months unless drastic action is taken, Laguna Lake Development Authority chief Edgardo Manda said.
“I have made a strong recommendation to remove these people from the danger zones and not allow them to go back,” Manda said of the 400,000 squatters who are living mostly on what was once marshy wetlands. “The authorities would probably need to erect barricades and station sentries in these areas.”
The dramatic recommendation comes as large parts of eastern Manila remain flooded 12 days after Tropical Storm Ketsana dumped the heaviest rains in more than four decades on the city, killing at least 298 people.
Manda and other officials have acknowledged that chaotic urban planning, or no planning at all, exacerbated the crisis, particularly around Laguna, where shantytowns, factories and housing developments have overtaken farms.
However, Manda said he realized removing squatters from around the lake would be a “political decision” that may not sit well with politicians so close to national elections in May next year.
In those polls, local officials as well as a new president are chosen.
About 300,000 of the squatters are living in and around an illegal open garbage dump on wetlands that block two connecting rivers that are meant to channel excess water from the lake into Manila Bay to the west.
“The channel is constricted,” Manda said, adding that clearing the squatters and garbage from the wetlands was key to allowing water to flow more freely.
About 100,000 other squatters live in houses on stilts on the lakeshore to the south, he said.
Aside from the 1 million people living near the immediate shoreline, which is likely to remain flooded for many months, at least 1 million others live in adjacent districts of eastern Manila that are also still under water.
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo’s chief aide, Eduardo Ermita, on Wednesday announced a Belgian firm had been hired to dredge the Pasig River.
“Definitely this will help,” Ermita said, but he did not address the issue of the squatters directly.
He also said the government was reviewing the process of granting permits to developers of residential areas along the 220km stretch of Laguna shoreline that were now partly submerged.
“These things must be looked into because we can see the effects,” he told reporters.
Aside from working out a way to unplug the Laguna lake area, the government has been trying to care for more than 315,000 homeless flood survivors who remain in schools, sports arenas and other makeshift evacuation centers.
The government has warned that disease outbreaks are highly likely for those living in the shelters, as well as in the flooded areas around Laguna, because of unsanitary conditions.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS