“Right now, more than 4,000 households have notices of demolition and pending court cases of demolition and ejection, and unless the city government orders a moratorium or strikes an agreement with court judges for a moratorium, there would be more homeless persons in the coming months.”

The workshop groups further tackled issues like actual income capacity of urban poor households and their experiences with various housing schemes carried out and partnered by the city government like the Community Mortgage Program (CMP), Miscellaneous Sales (MS), Direct Purchase (DP), Gawad Kalinga (GK). They all concluded that the city government’s housing program is oppressive and anti-urban poor.

“It is clear that the city government has designed its housing schemes with bias for the elites, business, expats, tourists, as shown by its expensive and exorbitant housing units,” Juanito Tanalgo of KAISAHAN, an alliance of local neighborhood associations, said in the local language.

“We could hardly even meet our daily food needs, and they still want to hog tie us with high mortgaging fees and other charges for the housing unit,” he added.

Bacolod Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue aptly said that the huge number of “squatters”, “jobless”, and odd jobbers” in the city reflects the inability of the city government to provide adequate employment and support systems to its people.

“The acute corruption in the city government also exacerbates the failure to provide adequate and sustainable basic services to the urban poor; it’s in fact stealing something that belongs to the people,” she said.

Joblessness.

Official city and labor statistics processed by the author revealed that of the city’s total labor force of 228,000 as of 2007, 74 percent have no stable jobs and incomes and the rate is still growing. The rate of employment is a mere 26 percent and economic trends show that prospects are not getting any better.

Of the 74 percent, 43 percent or 98,700 are underemployed or odd jobbers, while the majority are either self-employed or working in family-based small businesses. Thirty-one percent or 70,664 are unemployed or continue to look for employment.

Only 26 percent or 58,636 are employed as regulars, probationary and under renewable job contracts, or with clear employer-employee relationships. Majority of this section of the workforce are covered by the city’s estimated 21,000 registered businesses as of end-2007.

Of the employed, 30,028 are in general and professional services, i.e. schools, government offices, the communication and transportation sector, and other utility services.

Around 22,854 are in agri-aqua farms, e.g. rice, sugar, fishing, fishponds, vegetables, orchards and coconut plantations.

Commerce and trade accounts for 3,554 of the employed, while processing/manufacturing accounts for 2,200.

The level of unemployment conditions in the city is not surprising given the city government’s slow job generation vis-a-vis the rapid population growth and migration rate.

In fact, this condition is similar to that of all other cities and town centers in Negros.

The city government’s stress on the service sector is problematic because it is the sector with the most unstable employment, while the agriculture sector which still constitutes the biggest resources and labor reserves of the city remain largely neglected.

The city has 16,945 hectares of land, of which 9,101 hectares or 53.7 percent are devoted to agriculture; unless the city does something to address this reality, it can never achieve an all-around development.

It is a must for the city to re-orient its thrust toward spurring growth with jobs and development with equity, or it will be saddled with growing unemployment and population in the long run.

The region’s seasonal, mono-crop, sugar-based economy that serves as the bastion of surplus labor and causes the continuous urban migration to escape widespread and worsening poverty and hunger in the rural areas is another factor to be blamed.

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