The Compostela cadastral "blunder" oversleeps - II

The litany of “goodies” received by the barangay captains led by ABC President Joven Amor of barrio Cogon is astoundingly staggering in kind and value. They consist of P200T each for barangay hall improvements, P100T each for day care/health centers, P50 T for socio-cultural activities, 360 bags of cement plus P50T for aggregates, and 17multicabs.

The Lady Governor is after all concerned that Compostela is the first in Philippine history without a set of officials, say, an SB to enact the budget, and a Mayor to implement the programs. May be now, with the Provincial Governor fighting with “clenched fists”, could nudge the over-sleeping Comelec of its bounden duty… One year and 3 months hence, the 3-year term of the municipal officials shall have ended, but the promised Comelec election results recanvass remains unfulfilled. And resolution of the issue shall have also become moot and academic.

Significantly, the two interior roads, namely: Cabadiangan Provincial Road and Guimbal-Mulao-Tag-ube Provincial Road, both asphalt-paved by Governor Gwen. F. Garcia, are now in need of repairs and/or rehab. The interior barangays are hoping that before the 9-year tenure of the active Lady Governor ends, these road repair/rehab are done before then.

Perhaps, owing to the over-joy and suffused enthusiasm of the barangay captains on the unexpected assistance from the Provincial Capitol, there’s another serious and looming problem that they “forgot” to bring up to the Lady Governor. It concerns the cadastral “blunder” affecting landowners with regard to over-lapping boundaries.

Perhaps, not all barangay officials now are aware of the cadastral “boners” committed by the then Bureau of Lands. This is possible because the overlapping of boundaries is likely to resurface only when a parcel of land is offered for sale and, the prospective buyer secures from the DENR the sketch plan with the now altered technical descriptions.

The root cause could be the inaccurate reference to the Bureau of Lands Locational Monument (BLLM) or “dakung mohon,” somewhere along the coastline some 3 to 5 meters away from the exact location. This could result in the almost uniform over-lapping of boundaries along the western sides of some 3 to 5 meters variance.

Now, the DENR plans to conduct cadastral survey of Minglanilla, Argao, Tuburan, and Tabuelan that entails a total expense budget of P49.879M for a total area of 25,710 hectares, or 34.90 percent of the Central Visayas project. Thus, for each of the 4 towns – with different areas or acreage – may be a budget of P12M may suffice. Since the Compostela correction survey may not involve every parcel it may need lesser than P10M budget. It also appears that the DENR is not that penniless to effect the correction. Besides, the Province of Cebu through the kind Lady Governor could be persuaded to help out, if only to buy peace among the affected lot owners.

The Compostela long “abandoned” survey project stays inaccurate, as the needed re-survey/correction has long been left unattended to by the erring geodetic engineer/personnel or survey contractors. The national policy to “hasten and complete the cadastral survey of the country for land titling, land use planning, and internal revenue allotment (IRA) program, shall have been frustrated, and in effect abandoned, if prior cadastral survey “blunders” are not corrected.

Hence, one encourages the ABC of Compostela through Barangay Cogon’s Joven Amor as the ABC president to bring up the matter to the Lady Governor. It’s not impossible for Governor Gwen to summon and confer with the DENR-7 Regional Director Maximo Dichoso to address the issue, together with the 17 barrio captains. In fact, one may even volunteer to tag along with them to the Provincial Capitol to confer with Governor Garcia for whatever inputs on the matter of public concern, within one’s knowledge.