Tenants of Sunvar Realty Development Corp. have vacated their units at the Mile Long building, days after the Court of Appeals ordered a Makati City court to eject the occupants on the property that has been leased by the Prieto and Rufin families.
Some tenants were seen dragging furniture and loading them on trucks on Friday, the last day given to the occupants to leave.
One of the businesses that were forced to close shop was the Alviar Medical Laboratories.
Pete Cura, chief executive officer of Corplan Inc., one the offices affected, reported seeing elderly patients walking out of the Mile Long commercial center after discovering that the Alviar Laboratory had closed.
Cura took Solicitor General Jose Calida to task for being “a loser in human compassion.”
“Solgen, you may have won your case against the Rufino-Prietos and perhaps brownie points with your boss, but you certainly are a loser as far as the virtue of human compassion is concerned,” Cura said.
“The Solgen has refused the requests of tenants to extend his imposed deadline—three days after he personally served the notice of eviction last Tuesday, 6 p.m.—so that tenants like the Alviar Medical Laboratories could maintain their operations while working on their relocation,” he said.
“Elderly people like the one with a walker who came for blood works after eight hours of fasting had to be turned away. The old woman with the walker is just one many dismayed patients,’’ Cura added.
President Rodrigo Duterte had vowed to seize the Mile Long property from the Prieto-Rufino family, owner of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, accusing it of leasing the property during the Marcos administration at a disadvantage to the government.
On Monday, the Court of Appeal’s 5th Division headed by Associate Justice Jose Reyes issued a resolution ordering Sunvar to vacate the property.
A total of 273 tenants at the Mile Long property were told to vacate the premises after the government served the eviction notice on Tuesday.
Cura, tenant of Sunvar for 25 years, said the three-day period to vacate was not enough to find a place for relocation.
The tenants became “collateral damage” when Duterte ran after the Prieto-Rufino family, he said.
On his Facebook post Thursday, Cura wrote: “When greed and callousness clash with righteous governance, unit owners and tenants are hapless victims. This is the story of the Sunvar/Mile Long situation.”