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Sunday, March 07, 2004
Prov’l board okays Sual ‘loan’ measure
By Ben C. Erto
LINGAYEN –- THE provincial board finally approved a Municipal Council resolution of Sual granting Mayor Luis E. Agbayani the authority to enter into a contract with the Land Bank of the Philippines for the acquisition of a P176.13 million loan to finance infrastructure and economic development projects.
SB Resolution 83 s. 2003 was supposed to be approved on February 27 but Board Members Danilo B. Dizon and Ariel G. de Guzman sought the deferment of the passage of a board resolution declaring the measure as within the conferred powers of municipal legislature to enact.
Upon knowing of the deferral of the measure’s approval, Agbayani lamented the action taken by the two board members of the first district of Pangasinan, saying the move of the town to acquire the loan has no legal impediment.
After the approval of the board resolution last Friday, de Guzman, one of the proponents of the resolution, sought the exclusion of his name as a co-author.
Sun.Star gathered, however, that the implementation of the Sual projects had already been started because Landbank had reported released an initial amount of P87 million.
Board Member John Agerico Rosario, majority floor leader, said the board had presumed Landbank did not require the submission of any document showing prior approval of the provincial board.
“We moved to understand that within the ambit of the powers of the local legislature, the acquisition of a loan has to do with the propriety of that undertaking and also on the volume that was being contracted,” he said.
Rosario said there was a strong opposition from Dizon who felt rightly or wrongly that the loan being acquired was rather high.
He said under the Local Government Code, the municipal legislature is required to submit to the board for review and approval very limited requirements.
“One of them is a measure on economic relevance. The contracting of a loan will or will not have economic relevance right away. So (the Sual resolution) could be taken as an expression of sentiment of the body. That is the gray area in the Local Government Code,” he said.
The majority floor leader said the Sual government did not violate any law in the acquisition of the loan.
Mayor Agbayani, in an earlier interview, said the loan would be used to finance the construction of 15 kilometers of road lines, of which about one kilometer in each barangay would be cemented.
He said this was the clamor of tricycle drivers and farmers who are having a hard time transporting their produce to the town proper.
Agbayani said except for three barangays, all the other communities would benefit from the said project. The three areas are Cabilitian island because there are no motorized vehicles in the island, the town proper and Pangascasan, where the road going to the power plant has been cemented.
He said since the cost of construction materials has been increasing, the people suggested that the municipal government should implement the project right away.
(March 7, 2004 issue)
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