City seeks new extension of appeal on Awai land

By February 11, 2008Headlines, News

DAGUPAN City’s hope to recover its 30-hectare land in barangay Awai, San Jacinto, which it lost to the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in 2004, appears to be getting dimmer.

The city government admitted it cannot meet the deadline set by the Department of Agrarian Reform to submit a topographical map of the 30-hectare property.

But City Legal Officer George Mejia said the city government has asked for another extension this time to lapse on March 30. This will be the second extension it sought from the DAR.

The topographical map being prepared by the city seeks to show that a major portion of the 30-hectare property is rolling, and therefore not fit for agriculture.

Dagupan City, under the administration of Mayor Benjamin Lim, purchased the property for P16 million ostensibly for the construction of a sanitary landfill in support of its solid waste management program.

Reginaldo Ubando, chief of the city’s Wage Management Office, earlier told DAR officials that 66 percent of the 30-hectare property is a rolling land but failed to present any proof to back up his claim.

Consequently, the DAR asked the city government to submit a topographical map to support the latter’s petition seeking to reverse the decision of the Department of Agrarian Reform Arbitration Board (DARAB) that placed the whole area under the coverage of CARP.

The DARAB decision had long become final and executory owing to the failure of the Lim administration to act and respond to the petition for compulsory coverage by the tenants of the property. It did not even bother to file a motion for reconsideration when it had the opportunity.

Mejia said he is exhausting all legal remedies in order to recover the 30-hectare property bought by the city from one Jose Mariano Cuña, a businessman from Dagupan City and a known close acquaintance of the former mayor in April 2002, who bought the land from Estrella Sangalang of San Jacinto on December 22, 2001, four months earlier, for P7 million. —LM

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