The Office of the Building Office (OBO) in Bacolod City served a notice of violation to the management of the two malls in the city for lack of occupancy permits for the renovation of their malls.
Engineer Isidro Sun Jr., head of OBO, said yesterday that this year, the two malls were conducting a renovation of their buildings, but until now they failed to secure the occupancy permit.
“We are still waiting for their building plans so that they will be given a permit and their tenants can also process their business permit,” he said.
He added most of the tenants of the malls are also facing problems in processing their business permits since it’s one of the requirements of the Business Permits and Licensing Office (BPLO).
Sun noted that they cannot sign the documents of the tenants for the processing of their business permits since there’s a problem in the building.
Sun said some of the tenants managed to process their business permits during the business one-stop-shop, which was before the renovation of the mall buildings.
The mall owners were said to violate Section 301 of the National Building Code (Presidential Decree 1096), which stated that no person, firm, or corporation, including any agency or instrumentality of the government, shall construct, alter, repair, convert, use, occupy, move, demolish and add any building/structure or any portion thereof, or cause the same to be done, without first obtaining a building permit thereof from the OBO assigned to the place where the subject building is located or to be done.
Sun said the malls already started their renovations without securing the permit so its management will be penalized.
He said they would serve the second notice of violation to the management of malls next week.
The Bacolod City Legal Office (CLO) also earlier urged the management of one of the malls in the city to comply with their fire clearance for the issuance of a business permit.
This, was after most of the tenants of the mall failed to secure business permits due to the failure of the mall to get a fire safety permit./ MAP