Decades after failing to secure a proclamation delineating a portion of the Slaughterhouse compound as a housing site, officials of the neighborhood cooperative have asked Baguio officials anew to support their bid to have a portion of the area segregated and affirm the community development plan they prepared.
This, as the present administration has repeatedly announced it will relocate the slaughterhouse facility to Pinsao then develop the area into a modern terminal catering primarily to northbound buses and other public utility vehicles.
Punong Barangay Camilo Tacbas said residents are pressing the segregation of residential areas for fear they might be displaced for they do not legally own the lots where their houses stand if the city government will proceed with the development,
Part of the proposed development plan prepared by a private company commissioned by the Sto. Niño Housing Cooperative is relocation of houses into five medium-rise buildings.
The city council, which has passed several resolutions in the past supporting delineation of occupied portions, has advised the residents through Tacbas to request Rep. Mark Go to submit a bill which could help them legally own the areas they have been occupying since the 1960s.
The residents were also advised to consult with the City Planning and Development Office, the City Legal Office, and the Department of Health about the proposed development at the site.
Lawyer Isagani Liporada of the City Legal Office said the city government, as administrator, can only introduce minor developments at the site as the slaughterhouse is still owned by the national government under the DOH.
He also expressed reservation about introducing major developments in the area saying that while residents are not precluded from petitioning the government, several attempts in the past to have the area segregated have not been granted.
The compound is reserved as a sanitary camp and livestock yard delineated under Presidential Proclamation 312 issued on April 30, 1930.
On Jan. 31, 1974, then President Ferdinand Marcos signed Proclamation 1228 excluding a certain portion open to disposition. Over 40 years have passed but the city government has yet to transfer ownership of the area to the city government and which stalled plans to develop the area, and also resulted in the increase of informal occupants.
Pending the renewed call for either the President to issue a proclamation or for Congress to pass a law segregating the slaughterhouse into a housing site, newly-appointed CPD Officer Donna Tabangin said a special committee will review and possibly revise the development plan prepared by the residents.
Tabangin said the Proclamation Committee (composed of the CPDO, National Housing Authority, city council chair of the committee on lands, and the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council will convene to discuss development plan for slaughterhouse compound. She said the residents need not pay a private company to make a community development plan for them.
She said initial assessment would show that the best development for the area would be “mixed-use” or there will be vertical development for tenement housing infused with commercial areas.
Tabangin said the design would consider the environmental, social, and economic impact of the development.
The Proclamation Committee has four months to prepare the development plan, after which public hearings will be called before the city council ratifies the proposed plan. – Rimaliza A. Opiña
April 19, 2024
