10K housing units for ISFs along Pasig River eyed
TEN thousand housing units would be constructed for informal settler families (ISFs) living along the Pasig riverbanks, the National Housing Authority said Saturday.
Assistant General Manager Alvin Feliciano told The Manila Times that the NHA has been collaborating with the members of the Inter Agency Council for the Pasig River Urban Development (IAC-PRUD) specifically for the establishment of resettlement sites.
“The NHA, led by General Manager Joeben Tai, is now preoccupied in processing and documenting the safe relocation for thousands of informal settler families living along the riverbanks of the main waterways,” said Feliciano, a former chairman of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor.
Also delegated as the IACPRUD secretariat, the NHA is set to build 10,000 housing units exclusively for the ISFs that would be affected by the grand rehabilitation of the 25-kilometer Pasig River, Feliciano said.
NHA’s mother unit, the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD), said that two relocation sites have already been proposed, one with the Philippine Ports Authority in Manila and the other with the Laguna Lake Development Authority at the Lupang Arenda in Rizal province.
Under the rehabilitation project dubbed “Pasig Bigyang Buhay Muli” (PBBM), DHSUD Secretary Jose Rizalino Acuzar said earlier that the project’s master plan also included the prioritization of ISFs living along Pasig riverbanks that would be accommodated under the administration’s flagship housing program, the Pambansang Pabahay Para sa Pilipino Housing (4PH).
“The government will make sure that they (ISFs) will be given their own homes at the proposed resettlements sites to give way for the PBBM project, which was an initiative of First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos,” Acuzar said.
The PBBM project aims to transform Pasig River into a center of economic activity and tourism and promote transportation connectivity in Metro Manila and adjacent provinces, the housing officials said.
Recently, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and the first lady led the inauguration of the showcase area of the PBBM program at the MacArthur Bridge and Jones Bridge in Manila.
Acuzar said that the first lady had envisioned the revival of the Pasig River to become “a living river” of multiple benefits, which include safe walkways and bikeways along its banks, greener corridors, and a string of parks for communities nearby with commercial establishments.