The women of freedom island

For seven years, the families of Leonor Bello and Maribel Melo have been living in floating houses along the coast of Las Piñas and Parañaque, where they survive on fishing and gathering of seashells in the waters around Manila Bay’s Freedom Islands.

This is where the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) temporarily relocated their informal community, from a vacant field at the back of a mall in Parañaque, when the area along the coastal road was reclaimed.

Plans to transfer them to a permanent site fell through, and since then, their families have been living in flimsy shacks, with bamboo slats for flooring and recycled tarpaulin as roofing. Pieces of styrofoam allows the huts to float along the breakwaters, but with every typhoon, the fishing village consisting of about 70 to 100 families has to evacuate to safer ground and keep rebuilding the houses.

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By Rouchelle Dinglasan, GMA News Online.

Photo courtesy of Demolition Watch.