DEMOLITION crews started dismantling shanties owned by informal settlers along Zayas Landfill Road in Upper Carmen, Cagayan de Oro City this morning.

Teams of policemen in riot gear came to support the court-ordered demolition after it received reports that the more than a thousand informal settlers would resist any attempt to remove them from the 25-hectare land owned by a certain Christine Cid.

Police Maj. Evan Viñas, Cagayan de Oro City Police Office spokesperson said it would take days to dismantle more than 1,000 makeshift shanties that sprouted overnight on the property since January this year.

Viñas said plainclothes policemen enter the community as early as 3 am Tuesday to check for troublemakers but none were found.

“As of noon Tuesday, the removal of shanties is going on peacefully,” he said.

Informal settlers were left complaining by the side of the road helplessly watching the teams of demolition crew tearing down their shanties.

“The law has again sided with the rich. The poor are being prosecuted again,” an informal settler who identified herself as ‘Yolly’ yelled from the sidelines.

“Yolly,” said she paid a total of P1,700 to a group of Higaonon datus allegedly led by a certain Amir Lumatao Alibug who claimed the land as theirs showing a copy of the Spanish land title called “Bagting estate.”

The late President Ferdinand Marcos signed Presidential Decree no. 892 on Feb. 16, 1976, discontinuing the use of Spanish land titles as proof of ownership.

“I forked out another P200 when the datus came last Monday. Pang bribe daw sa pulis,”Yolly said.

Barangay Carmen local government led by Chairperson Rosemary Lorna Uy issued the demolition order after it found the settler constructed shanties without permits from the Cagayan de Oro City Office of the Building Official on June 13.

Viñas said a syndicate who claimed vast tracts of land in Barangay Carmen and Macasandig has duped the informal settlers into buying 200-meter lots along the Zayas Landfill Road.

Earlier, police arrested six persons who claimed they were Higaonon datus and have sold the land to unsuspecting buyers for P5,000 per lot.

More than 15 Higaonon datus have denounced the group as “fake” and have demanded they should stop wearing their traditional attires.