Wazzup Pilipinas!?
"We are concerned citizens, taxpayers, and organizations who disagree with Mr. Ang, and we oppose PAREX. We take this stand for Filipinos past, present, and future and for all citizens of the world who believe that the Pasig River is a living entity that deserves protection and respect. The PAREX STOA is the Pasig River’s death sentence."
On September 21, 2021, the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) and San Miguel Corporation (SMC) signed the Supplemental Toll Operations Agreement (STOA) for the Pasig River Expressway (PAREX). The proposed “19.37-kilometer six-lane, all elevated expressway” is planned to “traverse the entirety of Pasig River”. SMC CEO Ramon Ang claims the project would solve Metro Manila traffic and clean up the Pasig River.
We are concerned citizens, taxpayers, and organizations who disagree with Mr. Ang, and we oppose PAREX. We take this stand for Filipinos past, present, and future and for all citizens of the world who believe that the Pasig River is a living entity that deserves protection and respect.
The PAREX STOA is the Pasig River’s death sentence.
The harm from PAREX will far outweigh any projected benefits:
PAREX will worsen — not solve — traffic congestion.
Spending billions of pesos to build another expressway will only encourage people to drive more than they otherwise would. This well-documented phenomenon is known as induced demand. The most progressive cities around the world such as San Francisco, Boston, Seoul, Tokyo, Utrecht, and Paris are actually dismantling their inner-city or elevated expressways to improve mobility, revitalize their rivers, and protect their environment and heritage. PAREX will be a repeat of the mistakes progressive cities have made decades ago.
PAREX violates the Philippine National Transport Policy.
Said policy, approved by the Cabinet-level Board of the National Economic and Development Authority under the Duterte administration, explicitly instructs all agencies to maximize people throughput rather than vehicle throughput in the development of transport infrastructure and to prioritize public transport, pedestrians, and cyclists over private motor vehicles in the use of roads and bridges.
PAREX is anti-poor and will further cement the inequity on our roads.
The expressway will benefit only the few rich people in Metro Manila who drive private cars. By inducing more car travel, PAREX will harm not just public transport commuters, but slow down car users, too — and will worsen Metro Manila’s car-centric investments over the past decade. SMC’s promises to put a bus rapid transit system and cycling lanes on PAREX have not been supported by formal, detailed, and publicly available documents and feasibility studies.
PAREX will kill the Pasig River.
The project will render useless the years of work done to restore the river, and it will disregard the needs of future citizens. PAREX will hamper the river’s role in controlling floods, ensuring water security and urban biodiversity, and reducing the Urban Heat Island effect. Inducing car travel above the Pasig River will increase non-exhaust emissions like microplastics from car tires, road dust, and particulate matter that will pollute our rivers, streams, and oceans.,
PAREX will erase our people’s bond with the river that is the cradle of our country’s civilization and is a heritage resource of national significance.
For centuries, the river flowed as Manila’s primary transport artery, connecting inland settlements on the shores of Laguna de Bay with foreign traders in Manila Bay. The origins of Metro Manila cities may be traced back to the pre-colonial settlements, such as Namayan (present-day Santa Ana, Manila), located along the banks of the river. The seat of government is and has always been situated along this iconic body of water which has also served as a source of artistic, creative, and religious inspiration. Along its banks lie at least 40 important architectural treasures, and dozens more built heritage properties, historic bridges, industrial heritage, and heritage districts.
PAREX will kill any effort to restore the beauty of the Pasig River and to make our cities liveable.
The project will run counter to a global movement to recover lost waterways and to enhance blue-green infrastructures as “no regret” solutions for climate adaptation. It will prevent Metro Manila from joining the ranks of progressive cities — such as Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, Chicago, and New York — that have realized “that water can be a cultural and recreational asset, not something to hide or pillage.” PAREX will deprive people of a valuable blue space that will enhance their wellbeing. PAREX will make the prices of properties surrounding the Pasig River plummet as noise and air pollution make these properties less livable.
PAREX will worsen air pollution, destroy Pasig River’s ecology, and make Metro Manila more vulnerable to the climate crisis.
In the Philippines, toxic air from fossil fuels kills up to 27,000 people every year, according to a report from Greenpeace Southeast Asia. Dirty air can cost the country up to 1.9% of GDP in losses annually, says the NGO. An increase in exposure to hazardous air pollutants is associated with a 9% increase in death among COVID-19 patients. The river has a role in improving the climate resilience of the city of Manila. Almost 87% of the city’s land area is below the level to which sea water could rise, should a 10-year flood occur in 2030.
PAREX will inflict at least Php 164 billion in economic, health, and social costs: Php 97 billion in economic costs due to reduced property prices around the area; and an additional Php 67 billion due to reduced life expectancy from noise, air, and river pollution around the PAREX.
This conservative estimate does not even include heritage, environmental, ecological, and indirect health or COVID-19-related impacts of PAREX. It also does not include the future impact to taxpayers of the cost of highway removal.
The brazen approval of the STOA of PAREX violates due process
Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution states “The right of the people to information on matters of public concern shall be recognized. Access to official records, and to documents and papers pertaining to official acts, transactions, or decisions, as well as to government research data used as basis for policy development, shall be afforded the citizen, subject to such limitations as may be provided by law.” Under Section 3(a) of PD 1112, the TRB is duty-bound to ensure that the contracts it enters into “shall be open to citizens of the Philippines.”
We sent 14 letters to TRB executive director Atty. Alvin Carullo and members of the TRB to request detailed information about PAREX. However, we received only vaguely worded responses. There is no transparency into the full technical requirements for TRB’s approval or into the fiscal, economic, and environmental impacts of the project. At a public scoping activity on July 14, 2021, many citizens questioned the project’s health, heritage, economic, and environmental impacts. Neither TRB nor SMC replied satisfactorily to these valid concerns. We also sent a letter to SMC requesting a dialogue, but we received no reply. Given the hasty approval, we are unsure if the DOTr, DPWH, NEDA, or DOF — also Toll Regulatory Board members — and the DENR had enough time to study and sign off on the fiscal, economic, environmental, health, and heritage impacts of the Supplemental Toll Operations Agreement as they have not answered our queries.
Indeed, the very legal basis for the PAREX approval by the TRB is suspect. SMC and the TRB have been using an expired franchise as the basis for approving PAREX — which is being used to subvert the proper procedures under a full Investment Coordination Committee process. PAREX should be approved under more stringent rules under the Build Operate Transfer law.
In summary, we believe that PAREX will spell the death of the Pasig River and our people, heritage, mobility, economy, and environment. The project will violate the constitutional right of all Filipinos, including generations to come, to a balanced and healthful ecology.
Mr. Ang’s vision of PAREX as “the future urban transport” will not create the future that we want for our children and for our children’s children. The project is a step back, not a step forward. The Php 95 billion that SMC plans to spend on PAREX cannot compensate for the irreparable damage that the project will wreak on our society.
Instead of railroading the process, Mr. Ang would be remembered more favorably by future generations if he would use this massive sum to improve the promenades by the Pasig, improve the ferry system, and protect the heritage and ecology of the Pasig River. Otherwise, future taxpayers will have to bear the cost of taking PAREX down, as has happened in the most progressive cities in the world.
The brazen approval of the STOA of PAREX violates due process
Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution states “The right of the people to information on matters of public concern shall be recognized. Access to official records, and to documents and papers pertaining to official acts, transactions, or decisions, as well as to government research data used as basis for policy development, shall be afforded the citizen, subject to such limitations as may be provided by law.” Under Section 3(a) of PD 1112, the TRB is duty-bound to ensure that the contracts it enters into “shall be open to citizens of the Philippines.”
We sent 14 letters to TRB executive director Atty. Alvin Carullo and members of the TRB to request detailed information about PAREX. However, we received only vaguely worded responses. There is no transparency into the full technical requirements for TRB’s approval or into the fiscal, economic, and environmental impacts of the project. At a public scoping activity on July 14, 2021, many citizens questioned the project’s health, heritage, economic, and environmental impacts. Neither TRB nor SMC replied satisfactorily to these valid concerns. We also sent a letter to SMC requesting a dialogue, but we received no reply. Given the hasty approval, we are unsure if the DOTr, DPWH, NEDA, or DOF — also Toll Regulatory Board members — and the DENR had enough time to study and sign off on the fiscal, economic, environmental, health, and heritage impacts of the Supplemental Toll Operations Agreement as they have not answered our queries.
Indeed, the very legal basis for the PAREX approval by the TRB is suspect. SMC and the TRB have been using an expired franchise as the basis for approving PAREX — which is being used to subvert the proper procedures under a full Investment Coordination Committee process. PAREX should be approved under more stringent rules under the Build Operate Transfer law.
In summary, we believe that PAREX will spell the death of the Pasig River and our people, heritage, mobility, economy, and environment. The project will violate the constitutional right of all Filipinos, including generations to come, to a balanced and healthful ecology.
Mr. Ang’s vision of PAREX as “the future urban transport” will not create the future that we want for our children and for our children’s children. The project is a step back, not a step forward. The Php 95 billion that SMC plans to spend on PAREX cannot compensate for the irreparable damage that the project will wreak on our society.
Instead of railroading the process, Mr. Ang would be remembered more favorably by future generations if he would use this massive sum to improve the promenades by the Pasig, improve the ferry system, and protect the heritage and ecology of the Pasig River. Otherwise, future taxpayers will have to bear the cost of taking PAREX down, as has happened in the most progressive cities in the world.
Our calls to action
We call on the Office of the President to stop PAREX.
We call on the members of the TRB--the DOTr, DPWH, DOF, NEDA--to withdraw approval of the PAREX STOA until all economic, social, environmental, and heritage issues have been resolved.
We call on TRB, SMC, and architect Felino Palafox Jr. to make public the project’s full economic costs and all environmental, social, health, and heritage impact assessments.
We call on the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources to disclose all the approvals needed for PAREX to proceed, what stage the project is for each of these approvals, and to commit to a timetable and concrete steps to ensure sufficient public consultation and inputs into decisions regarding PAREX.
We call on all the directors and shareholders of SMC to investigate the brazen approval of PAREX that violates Environmental, Social, and Governance principles and destroys the environment and the people’s future for private corporate gain.
We call on the leaders and representatives in Congress to investigate the hasty process that led to the approval of PAREX.
We call on the media to investigate the implications of the PAREX approval on campaign finance for those who signed this harmful project right before the deadline for the filing of candidacy for elections — and look into campaign donations that may have led to the brazen approval of this harmful project.
We call on the National Commission for Culture and the Arts to issue a comprehensive assessment of how the PAREX will affect built heritage sites along the Pasig River and to file an emergency petition declaring the Pasig River as a Cultural Landscape of National Significance.
We call on local government units to not issue permits for PAREX.
We call on all voters to remember the public officials who approved this flawed project that will endanger us and future generations of Filipinos.
We call on all citizens, especially those who reside near the Pasig River, to attend their Barangay Assemblies in October to object to this project.
We call on everyone to protect the Pasig River and take a stand: #NoToPAREX #IlogPasiglahin
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
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