ISSUANCE of a development and building permit for Villa Montañosa socialized housing project in La Trinidad, Benguet still hangs.
The La Trinidad Municipal Council have been deferring the application for the development and building permit of Villa Montañosa’s project in Longlong Puguis, until the developer has solved the site’s development issues.
Councilor Roderick Awingan said that the developers must first improve the site before building houses for the association.
“We’re also asking ourselves, if there are no roads and drainages what will happen despite having houses in there? So, we need to finish first the construction of roads and drainages because if there would be accidents in the future, it will be the negligence of the local government unit,” he said.
The 21, 483 square meter Villa Montañosa socialized housing project is a government project under the Philippine Commission for Urban Poor (PCUP) for informal settlers, victims of demolition and unprivileged to own a decent home that was funded by Social Housing Financing Corporation (SHFC).
Villa Montañosa Home Owners Association consists of 235 members mostly vendors, about 40 were from La Trinidad, others are from Baguio, Tuba and from neighboring towns.
Architect Rafael Tabadero disclosed the cutting of lots varies from 45 to 60 square meters for 235 houses. The zoning officers require them to make an eight meters wide road, and minor roads with six meters or four meters.
“After three months of investigation they considered to increase the budgeting but can’t sustain the 50 million, so we have a meeting to the association to prioritize what were just needed to construct for a cost of 23 million and ask us to minimize the budget for 20 million” Tabadero added.
Councilor Nestor Fongwan Jr. also challenged the developers to seek for water source because there is no resource water outlet in the area.
“There is a legal battle between the owners and the buyer of water source so the WRB had already closed and canceled the water permit of the Long Long water cooperative. We can always tap any water coop but the question is where will we get our water," Fongwan added. (Fionna Mel Felicitas, MMSU intern)