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Monday, January 30, 2006
City, Capitol to wrap up land swap agreement
By Linette C. Ramos
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
AFTER ironing out the legal aspects of the deal, Cebu City and Cebu Province officials will meet tomorrow to finalize the land swapping agreement that will give security of tenure to some 4,150 families living in Province-owned lots in the city.
The Province’s 435,991-square-meter properties, worth some P3 billion, in 11 barangays will be swapped with the City’s prime lots at the north reclamation area, with a total lot area of 33,737 square meters (P415.35 million).
Some Provincial Board members, department heads of the City and Provincial Government, the City’s Division for the Welfare of the Urban Poor (DWUP) and representatives of the 45 homeowners’ associations that stand to benefit from the deal were invited to attend tomorrow’s executive session.
Since the City Council has already endorsed the land swapping, Councilor Nestor Archival said all there is left to discuss are the amount the City will collect from the beneficiaries and the mode of payment they will adopt.
“We just want to discuss other details and make the beneficiaries understand their obligations to the City. It’s just a matter of signing the MOA and implementing the deal,” he said in a phone interview yesterday.
In a separate interview, Councilor Jocelyn Pesquera said she also wants to ascertain that the swap is not disadvantageous to the City.
“There is no problem with swapping, we’ve done it before with private entities, but we just have to be sure that the City is not disadvantaged by the deal,” she said.
Archival proposed a resolution authorizing Mayor Tomas Osmeña to enter into and sign the memorandum of exchange of real properties with the Provincial Government, represented by Gov. Gwen Garcia.
The council will deliberate on the resolution after the executive session, which was scheduled tomorrow and on Feb. 8.
Once the memorandum is signed, it will take three weeks to a month to implement the swapping, which will include the exchange of lot titles, survey plans, contract to sell and their respective ledgers, Archival said.
The City Government will be able to ensure that 2,815 urban poor families get to keep the Province-owned lots they have been occupying in the last 30 years, if the deal materializes.
Of the total 4,148 families, only 1,433 have paid in full for the Capitol lots, but some have yet to process their documents and titles, City Administrator Francisco Fernandez said.
Osmeña and Garcia agreed to swap properties to prevent the eviction of the 2,815 families.
As stated in the memorandum, the City will take over the collection of the remaining P185.7-million obligations of the occupants to the Province under Provincial Ordinance 93-1.
The Province gets to keep the P107.15 million it already collected.
Under Provincial Ordinance 93-1, occupants of the Province-owned property were entitled to purchase their lots on installment basis from 1993 to 1998. This was later extended to May 2004.
The occupants asked for another extension but Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia vetoed the ordinance seeking to move the deadline for payments.
Garcia said earlier the Province is looking beyond “market values” of the lots as it is focusing on the economic and social value of the land swapping deal with the City.
She added that with the deal, Capitol can finally “extricate itself from becoming a collection agent of those occupying the property but did not come up with their end of the bargain.”
Even if the City Government stands to lose at least P232.2 million, the council favored the land swap deal since it would address poverty and urban poor housing problems in the city.
There are no legal obstacles to the land swapping, the council said, “but there should be appropriate legislative intervention to put into agreement what the City and the Province have already agreed on in principle.”
The City would be giving the Province 26 lots at the North Reclamation Area, a prime lot fronting SM City, presently used as nursery and storage space for City Hall equipment in exchange for the Province’s 53 parcels of land.
The provincial properties are in Barangays Apas, Luz, Busay, Camputhaw, Capitol Site, Kalunasan, Kasambagan, Lahug, Lorega, Mabolo and Tejero.
In the executive session, Archival said they also want to clarify with DWUP exactly how many beneficiaries there are, how many lots have been awarded to its occupants, and how many lots are left.
The city treasurer, city budget officer, city administrator, General Services Office chief, city accountant, DWUP and Local Housing Board officials were invited to the session and were asked to bring documents useful to the land swap deal and the properties involved.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (January 30, 2006 issue)
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