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While affected residents of Marawi City see the lack of housing as a problem, some landowners see it as an opportunity—to raise the price of their property. Adoracion Navarro, undersecretary of the National Economic Development Authority (Neda), said the assumed cost of land being offered to government planners by some Marawi landowners has risen 10 times the prevailing price. “The previous market value was P500 per square meter (but) the asking price that reached us was P5,000 per square meter,” Navarro said in a press briefing in Malacañang on Friday, adding that “the speculative price was a result of the armed conflict” in Marawi last year that saw the city’s houses and buildings razed to the ground. As part of Marawi’s rehabilitation and reconstruction, the government was looking for parcels of land that it can use to build housing for displaced residents. For five months, government troops battled Islamic State-inspired extremists who laid siege to Marawi in May 2017, and flattened the city. President Duterte placed Marawi, and subsequently, the entire Mindanao island under martial law because of the armed conflict. Eduardo del Rosario, chair of Task Force Bangon Marawi, said he himself discovered the land price hike when the interagency task force was double-checking the cost of land needed for its programs, projects and activities. |
