2006: Davao Today’s Year-End Series

Philippines Is Top Housing Rights Violator

Poverty, hunger, violent demolitions, and lack of social services and basic utilities continue to plague the urban poor. And things are getting worse. In fact, the Philippines was adjudged by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Eviction (COHRE) as one of three recipients, together with Nigeria and Greece, of the Housing Rights Violator Award ?for their systematic violation of housing rights and continued failure to abide by their international legal obligations.?

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Davao?s Homeless Face a Bleak 2007


HOUSING HEADACHE. City Hall has problems meeting its housing targets to benefit poor Davaoenos, like these slum dwellers near Bankerohan. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)

2006: Davao Today's Year-End Series

This year, more and more urban-poor dwellers in Davao City cannot be expected to build their own homes, as City Hall and the national government are hard put to raise funds for their housing programs. A more disturbing aspect of the problem, however, is that even if houses were made available to poor Filipinos, they don?t have enough income to pay for these. In the meantime, the demolition of houses in slum areas continues, displacing hundreds of families.

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2006: The Economics of Hype

2006: Davao Today's Year-End Series

Administration propaganda one-sidedly presents growth, peso appreciation, lower public deficits and foreign investments as if these were development ends in themselves. But the deteriorating social conditions of joblessness, hunger and poverty are the sharpest rebuttal of any government economic hype.

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A Step Forward in Wage Fight, Amid Repression and Violence

2006: Davao Today's Year-End Series

The approval of the P125 wage increase bill by the Lower House is welcome news for workers, who could use even just a little relief from soaring prices of basic goods and services amid rock-bottom income. It is a gain that came at the price of trade union repression and political killings that victimized labor leaders among others.

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