Squatters choke rice paddies in Bulacan

BOCAUE, Bulacan: As informal settlers from Metro Manila are again being relocated in Bulacan, farmer leaders in this town are wondering if the informal settlers that have occupied a long stretch of the irrigation canal, can once and for all be relocated so as not to impede the flow of irrigation water to their farmland.

An estimated 250 hectares of once productive irrigated rice land are slowly becoming abandoned lands because of lack of irrigation water—house structures of the informal settlers have prevented the water from flowing to the farmland.