Residents in upper Macasandig and Indahag staged a picket rally last Saturday to protest the resumption of development work on Forest Lake Memorial Park project.
Residents from Arroville Subd., Melecia Homes and Molloi Polloi assembled infront of the memorial park development project last Saturday morning to once again register their opposition to the project which they said is “misplaced in a residential area.”
The memorial park project is located in a three-hectare land along the Macasandig- Taguanao road, just infront of Melecia Homes. Across the road are Arroville Subdivision and Molloi Polloi.
According to Momot Abrogar of the Melecia Homes Homeowners Association, the project has no social acceptability. “Ang gigamit nila nga proof nga dunay social acceptability, attendance sheet sa consultation,” Abrogar said.
Their signature in those sheets of paper does not in any way express support for the project, Abrogar added.
Aside from “faking” social acceptability, the cemetery developers have violated the prohibition of cemeteries in residential areas.
The homeowners associations questioned City Ordinance no. 12796-2014, approving the Preliminary Approval and Location Clearance (PALC) for the Forest Lake Memorial Park Project, passed on June 16, 2014.
The cemetery developer “took a shortcut” in getting the City Council to approval based on the 2010 opinion of the City Planning and Development Office (CPDO) that classified memorial parks like parks and open spaces that is required by the zoning ordinance to be established in residential areas.
“How can a cemetery be classified as open space or park,” asked Arroville Subd. resident Dr. Ed Tigulo.
He added that parks and open spaces as prescribed by law in residential areas have to be public in nature and for recreational use by residents. “This memorial park is private and can never be for recreational use of the residents,” Tigulo said.
The City Council approved the project based on a 2010 opinion of the City Planning and Development Office that the cemetery project can be built in the residential zone, where park and open spaces are required. The 2010 opinion said memorial parks can be built in all zones – residential, commercial and industrial, as it it park-like in nature.
Aside from bringing to the public eye their opposition to the illegal memorial park project, the homeowners association have also brought their cause to court.
The Melecia Homes Subdivision Homeowners Association and the Arroville Subdivision Homeowners Association is asking the Regional Trial Court Branch 41 to issue an injunction against the project.
The homeowners in seeking restraint from the court and said that if the misplaced memorial park is allowed, they would suffer irreparable injury – the peace and quite in their homes disturb by the presence of the cemetery.
The project is also “an affront and offensive to their religious beliefs. Being Filipinos and most of them devout Christians and Catholics, it is offensive and unacceptable to their beliefs for the ‘dead’ will live with the living.”
They also cited health and environmental hazards the cemetery could pose in their communities.
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