Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr., in a simple ceremony held at the Bulwagang City Hall, distributed 31 newly reconstructed land titles to owners.
Belmonte urged owners to take care of their reconstituted titles as they cannot avail of the economic power of the documents if they are not in their possession.
The mayor reiterated his call to landowners whose papers were damage by the fire to claim their reconstituted titles at the Land Registration Authority on East Avenue.
He said some 12,000 reconstituted titles have remained unclaimed at the LRA because owners have lost the original duplicate copies.
Lawyer Albert Quilala, acting head of the Quezon City Register of Deeds said the reconstituted titles are turned over to owners upon surrender of their old owner’s duplicate. Should an owner fail to produce the duplicate copy, a court order is required to establish ownership.
Quilala said that of the 400,000 titles registered with their office only 20,000 were saved from the blaze that hit four floors of the main City Hall building on June 16, 1988.
He said their office is still working on the reconstitution of 50,000 of the 380,000 destroyed titles. – Perseus Echeminada