By PNA and U.S. News Agency / AsianSenator Ramon ‘Bong’ Revilla Jr. urged on Friday Malacañang to declare a moratorium on demolitions of informal settlers nationwide, including those in the areas affected by the recent series of storms and typhoons.“It would be a humane move for the national government if it suspends all demolitions considering the dilemma of informal settlers during rainy season,” Revilla said.Revilla stressed that under Section 28 of Republic Act (RA) 7279 or the Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992, eviction or demolition involving underprivileged and homeless citizens must be only carried out during good weather, “unless there is consent from the affected families.”“Being evicted by force and watching while your house is being torn down is already indignation to anyone, and it is more aggravating if it is being done with the heavy downpour as backdrop. Families with nowhere to go to most likely will not allow that,” the senator from Cavite added.Revilla made his appeal to the government, citing a report of urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) that forced eviction and violent demolitions have left some 35,000 residents, mostly women and children, homeless in Metro Manila.“The sight of their home being wrecked and having no definite shelter during bad weather would certainly place a mother or a child in fear of imminent physical harm . This is aside from the risk of getting sick from colds, fever and water-borne disease such as dengue, diarrhea, cholera and leptospirosis,” said Bong Revilla.He further pointed out that implementation of demolition orders should be done properly with order from the court and must have substantial number of demolition crew and security forces to protect and help the families hardly hit by typhoons.Revilla, chairman of the Senate committees on public services and public works, vowed to push measures that would alleviate the plight of millions of informal settlers in the country.“With due respect to our judiciary and to the executive branch, particularly our sheriffs, I believe that there may still be some loopholes in our law or procedures. We will look into it to ensure the smooth and peaceful eviction of informal settlers. But right now, delay all evictions and demolitions. If their lives are in danger because their houses are susceptible to flashflood or landslide, evacuate them, don’t evict them,” he added.Based on the 2010 study of the government-run research agency Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the Philippines was among Asian countries with large number of slum dwellHTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:45:08 GMT Server: Apache X-Pingback: usnewslasvegas.com/xmlrpc.php Link: ; rel=shortlink Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=99 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 200 OKThe server encountered an internal error ormisconfiguration and was unable to completeyour request.Please contact the server administrator and inform them of the time the error occurred,and anything you might have done that may havecaused the error.More information about this error may be availablein the server error log.Apache/1.3.33 Server at usnewslasvegas.com Port 80