DA lot residents to stop construction of laboratory

CEBU, Philippines - The lawyer representing the residents occupying the Department of Agriculture (DA) lot on M. Velez Street told the court yesterday that they will file temporary restraining order against the regional officers of the government agency.

Lawyer Benjamin Militar said that the TRO is to stop the regional officers from conducting a bidding for the construction of a laboratory. He said the invitation to bid was published in The FREEMAN newspaper on Sunday. He said it has a big impact on what they fight for to retrieve the DA compound.

“Why the regional officers conducted a bidding to construct laboratory in Mandaue City when in fact there was an already existing laboratory,” Militar said.

The residents of the DA compound, assisted by the Cebu City government, earlier filed a petition for injunction with prayer for a TRO against the provincial government after they were ordered to vacate the property.

The Capitol wanted to recover the property occupied by DA-7 citing the enactment of the Local Government Code of 1991 or Republic Act 7160, which devolved the functions of national agencies to local governments and alleged expiration of the usufruct contract that limits the term of use to only 50 years.

However, Militar presented former DA legal officer Katherine Pioquinto, who testified that the DA compound along M. Velez St. was owned by the national government and not by the Province of Cebu as shown in the old document they have secured from the Bureau of Archives.

The document, which was certified true copy by the Bureau of Archives, dated August 26, 1968 shows that the DA property is titled to the Republic of the Philippines and not to the Cebu Province.

Provincial Attorney Marino Martinquilla immediately questioned the presentation of the document saying it was not the original copy. But Pioquinto insisted that the document was an original certified copy of the title, saying that no less than the National Archives certified it.

Martinquilla questioned Pioquinto’s expertise to identify a certified copy from the original document saying that the latter is just a lawyer and not a document expert. (FREEMAN)