00:00 For more than a week, residents of Northville 9 in Barangay Iba, Calumpit, Bulacan, have been drowning.
00:07 This is a big relocation site.
00:10 According to the residents, even though they did not choose to live here, they accepted their fate.
00:17 We were transferred. Our house was demolished in Rilis. It's very hard here.
00:22 We lived here, ma'am. This is how it was. The condo, the feed ring, all the water. It was like this. It was even more desolate.
00:30 The water needs to be supplied to buy food and other necessities. But there is also a problem with buying.
00:38 Like Rolando, a construction worker, he stopped working because of the rain.
00:43 We really don't have a life now. We are just stuck in the mud.
00:48 That's how it is. You get wet.
00:50 The residents of Northville were displaced or relocated.
00:55 Most of them were displaced since 2008 because of the government's projects.
01:02 But this is what they were affected by.
01:04 When they arrived here in Northville, their houses were submerged in the flood.
01:08 According to some residents, this flood happens almost every year or often.
01:14 And this is what we saw here in Northville. They even have an evacuation center.
01:20 This school is their evacuation center.
01:25 Because the residents of this second and third floor are using it.
01:29 Their houses were really submerged in the flood.
01:32 According to the President of the United Bulacan Relocation and Resettlement Association,
01:38 10,000 individuals or 2,000 families were relocated here to provide for the North Rail project that will connect Bulacan and Manila.
01:49 When you are under power lines, railways, rivers, and other things, that's what they call a danger zone.
01:58 The ischemic of the river. You took us to the danger zone, you brought us to the death zone.
02:04 According to Opposition Senator Rizo Ontiveros, a sustainable relocation should be studied for the residents affected by the infrastructure projects.
02:14 If we will continue the infrastructure as a priority program of the government, if there is a need for relocation,
02:21 we will make sure that it is well.
02:23 They came from a difficult situation in the city, they were chased away for the infrastructure, they accepted it.
02:29 But every year, this is what they will do. It is not acceptable.
02:35 Earlier, Ontiveros was given assistance along with Bulacan Governor Daniel Fernando
02:40 from the affected by the flood and the flood in Calumpit.
02:44 That is only a temporary solution. It can only remove the bad inside.
02:49 Fernando said that one of the urgent needs of action is the substandard material of the rubber gate of Bustos Dam.
02:56 One of the main reasons of the heavy flooding is the loss of water.
03:02 That is why they are worried because if those five or six of them explode, many will die. Too many.
03:12 The entire province of Bulacan is now in a state of calamity.
03:16 The importance of the rubber gate of Bustos Dam is still being assessed by the heavy flooding and flooding.
03:21 Amor Santos, CNN Philippines.
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