DAGUPAN City Mayor Belen Fernandez denounced the attempt of two members of the legislature and Vice Mayor Brian Lim to railroad the blocking of the proposed 10-year Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) of Dagupan to stunt the economic growth of the city.

In a press conference Wednesday night, Mayor Fernandez lambasted the attempt to block the measure that was introduced as early as 2014 merely on the insinuation that her family stands to benefit from it.

The mayor said it is incidental that her family owns some of the lands in the area and like other property owners in the specifically fishponds in Barangays Lucao and Pantal, nobody had any inkling what development was in store for the area.

She pointed out that it is not only along the Lucao-Pantal area which was proposed as additional growth center but also the Bonuan growth corridor and the Caranglaan-Tebeng area.

Ms. Fernandez said her family already owned lands located in Barangays Lucao and Pantal decades ago, long before the idea to put up an expressway extension cutting across vast fishpond lands crossed the mind of then Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr.

It was the Jose de Venecia Expressway Extension, named after the late father of the then Speaker, that propelled urban planners to propose the area as a possible additional growth area in Dagupan.

“Our CLUP was last updated in 1978. There was an attempt to revise it in 2003 under the term of then Mayor Benjamin Lim but it was not ratified by the National Housing and Land Use Board, that was why it never became operational,” she said.

“To block the measure now simply because the opposition claims that my family had a pecuniary interest in the CLUP is not only baseless and unfounded but smacks of selfish vested political interests,” the mayor said.

She said the executive department proposed the CLUP to the SP since October 2014 but the committee on land utilization headed by Councilor Alfie Fernandez sat on it for a long time.

“It was only in March 2015 after we repeatedly followed it up when it was finally endorsed for public hearings. They conducted public hearings five times and lo and behold, the report was only submitted last May 27, 2016 with a recommendation of the chair of that joint committees (Councilor Fernandez) and another member (Councilor Redford Erfe Mejia) signing that it (CLUP) be subjected for further study,” she said.

Four other members of the joint committees dissented on the report of the chairman which was the basis of majority floor leader Councilor Maybelyn Fernandez in including the CLUP as among the items in the agenda during the SP regular session on June 7. (See related story “ “Dagupan SP approves CLUP” and the dissenting opinion to the report in this issue).

Citing the claim of Vice Mayor Lim that the CLUP was not validly passed, she said the people of Dagupan should know who among the city officials are blocking the progress of the city.

She said among all the cities in Region 1, Dagupan is the only one which has not updated its CLUP and, therefore, lost its competitiveness with the neighboring cities.

“We need a new CLUP for Dagupan to stay in competition with the other cities in the Philippines. Investors that come to the city need suitable areas to put up their businesses and where local businessmen will also expand their business,” she said.

More investors, mean more jobs for Dagupenos, she said. (Leonardo Micua)

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