Provident Village Scandal

Should we blame the real estate developers for this mess? I wanted to know and started looking for the people behind Provident Village. I came across this:

http://www.lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2007/jan2007/gr_154739_2007.html

It seems these people are PROSECOR (Provident Securities Corp.), a company that closed in 1987 and which carries a rather colorful history.

In 1979 the President of the Provident Village Homeowners Association filed a complaint with the National Housing Authority (NHA) because PROSECOR violated five sections of PD 957 including the provision requiring them to provide an open space for the residents.

Unfortunately before the NHA ruling could be enacted, the papers pertaining to the case mysteriously vanished. You’d have to be denser than Osmium if you don’t find this suspicious.

Then PROSECOR sells the open space and some other lots to another corporation, thus dragging them into the mess.

In 2002 this article came out in the Manila Standard.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1370&dat=20020913&id=_pIVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xgoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3920,1293475

Apparently the company was also involved in legal action when about 102 lot buyers failed to receive their titles. The article noted that the respondents (company and its owners) were fined for unsound business practices. Notice too the section on “fraudulent manipulations”.

I did a simple web search on the owner of the development company. It’s very interesting but remember that duplicate names abound.

I’d like to be more generous with my assessment but there is one fact that floored me. According to the second article, PROSECOR did not even submit required papers or even have the subdivision plan registered with the NHA. The order to stop selling lots came only in 1978. By then people had already bought lots. Great… Insert expletives here…

So it’s pretty obvious the developer failed with a capital F. Government didn’t even have a chance to review the developer’s plan prior to implementation. You’d think that some official would have noticed an undocumented subdivision being built in the area. Apparently no one did. The only thing left for government was to clean up the mess. Unfortunately, government failed to do that too. Sure the lawsuits were settled and the people’s finances were smoothed out. It seems no one considered the people’s safety.