Reconstituted QC land titles ready for distribution

Forty-eight -year-old Ninfa Ibarra-Lanoria broke into tears when she found out that fire hit the upper floors of the 14-story Quezon City Hall main building on June 16, 1986.

Lanoria, a resident of Fairview, Quezon City, knew quite well the intricacies that entail, not to mention the financial burden, in restoring land titles destroyed or damaged in the blaze.

What would become of their family’s 80-square-meter lot, which they had worked so hard to acquire?

The long, sleepless nights that followed for her and her husband, Mario, 50, were almost unbearable.

Herminio Aure, 35, married, of Roxas District, almost lost his sanity, when he was informed by his wife Elena of the blaze.

"Isipin n’yo naman ang sakripisyo naming mag-asawa para namin mabili ang lote namin," Aure, a former overseas Filipino worker in Saudi Arabia, said.

Now, almost 19 years after the incident, the Lanorias and Aures, as well as other affected landowners, can finally be at ease.

Thanks to the city government’s intensified title reconstitution program the problem could soon be laid to rest, once and for all.

Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. announced yesterday that landowners whose land titles were damaged by the city hall fire 19 years ago can now claim their reconstituted titles at the Land Registration Authority (LRA) on East Avenue corner NIA Road, Quezon City during office hours.

Belmonte said reconstituted titles are now piling up at the LRA.

Earlier, lawyer Regina Medalla, chief of LRA Reconstitution Division, reported to the mayor that the agency processed a total of 41 titles for the month of February alone.

In March, the LRA received 31 petitions for title reconstitution and rendered two decisions, including 70 land titles.

Medalla said that to date, the agency has reconstituted a total of 115 land titles.

Last March, Belmonte led city hall officials in the distribution of dozens of reconstituted titles to landowners at the City Hall Bulwagan.

Medalla said the LRA has intensified its efforts in title reconstitution proceedings, in compliance of the Authority’s circular No. 13, dated July 26, 1989, requiring the immediate reconstitution of damaged or lost land titles as a protective measure against title substitution and to prevent the proliferation of spurious land titles in Quezon City.