HLURB tells gov’t about untitled lands

IF THE government is really eager to provide permanent resettlement areas in northern Cebu, a Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board 7 official said they should consider using untitled lands.

HLURB 7 director Alixes Roy Lopez told Sun.Star Cebu in a recent interview that the existing 99-hectare land inventory for resettlement scattered in nine local government units in northern Cebu could be expanded if government will allow untitled lands that have tax declarations to serve as resettlement sites.

Lopez said the existing land inventory of 99.25 hectares are subdivided into 11,368 lot cuts, where the same number of houses are eyed to be built, with majority of the donations coming from non-government organizations.

The Cebu Provincial Rehabilitation and Recovery and Development Plan recorded 16,290 households in northern Cebu to be relocated. These families are living within the 40-meter danger zone.

Based on a document forwarded by Lopez, less than 600 homes of the 11,368 committed were completed a year after the typhoon.

Lopez said he is not aware when the completion of the projects will be since data come primarily from the LGUs.

The reason why there are little or no titled properties in some towns in northern Cebu, according to Lopez, is because some areas have been identified as “wilderness.”

The National Housing Authority 7 earlier said the islands of Bantayan and Camotes, comprising six municipalities of Bantayan, Sta. Fe, Madridejos, Pilar, Poro, and San Francisco, have been designated wilderness and mangrove forest reserves by then president Ferdinand Marcos in the early 1980s, which means lots in these areas “can neither be privately-owned or titled.”

To accelerate rehabilitation, Lopez advised that lands in these areas should be reclassified as “alienable and disposable” so that land titles can be issued.

On Friday, in time with the formal commemoration of typhoon Yolanda, Undersecretary Leslie Jeanne Cordero of the Office of the Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery said a presidential proclamation is being finalized to reclassify the lands in Bantayan Island and Camotes to be alienable and disposable.