Urban poor groups in Manila will set a protest action on Tuesday at the Supreme Court for junking petitions filed by different groups to nullify some provisions of Republic Act 7279 or the Urban Development and Housing Act which they claim as “anti-poor”.
The protest action coincides with the law’s 23rd year of implementation.
Signed into law by then President Corazon Aquino on March 24, 1992, UDHA is considered by some urban poor groups as an instrument of evicting informal settlers from their communities “in the name of development projects.”
Alyansa Kontra Demolisyon in a statement said “twenty three years after UDHA, [President Benigno Aquino III] is considered as Demolition King by the informal settlers for implementing massive eviction of urban poor from their communities. The Aquino administration within the span of its 6-year term aims to transfer more than half a million informal settler families from Metro Manila to off-city relocation sites in Metro Manila.”
