60 City Hall employees to get condo unit

CEBU, Philippines - At least 60 Cebu City government employees will soon have their own condominium unit after the housing project broke ground yesterday in Barangay Lahug.

Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella together with the officials of the Cebu City Employees Housing Cooperative, Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board-7, Home Development Mutual Fund, and National Housing Authority-7 led the groundbreaking ceremony.

The first housing project for the City Hall employees will be a four-storey medium rise condominium at Sugbo Homes, Redemptorist Road in Nivel Hills.

Labella said it is the pet project of Mayor Michael Rama since 70 percent of the population of City Hall employees does not have homes of their own.

Labella said the groundbreaking of the first housing project would serve as an early gift to Rama who will be celebrating his birthday on Wednesday.

“I would suggest that there should be strict guidelines in the awarding of the beneficiaries. First, is that there should be an absolute prohibition to sell this to other parties other than employees of the City Hall. There should not be sub-leasing to other parties because this is primarily intended for the employees of the City Hall and that they should not have own a house,” he said.

Labella said there should be strict implementation of the guidelines, adding that only those who are deserving employees should avail the project. Also, he said there should be strict prohibition of reselling the units.

To avail of the project, a beneficiary should be a City Hall employee and a member of the cooperative. Cebu City Employees Housing Cooperative chairman lawyer Dominic Diño said that the construction of the four-storey building will be handled by Wei Kiat Management and Development Company, a Singaporean real estate developer.

Diño said there are over 700 City Hall employees who have registered in the cooperative, adding that only 60 of them would first benefit the housing project.

He said the project aims to provide affordable housing to its members who are mostly renting and staying with their relatives in the city.

Each unit will have 18 square meters to 20 square meters with one bedroom. Diño said the price range of each unit is from P450,000 to P800,000 which can be charged against members’ HDMF or Pag-IBIG contribution.

The whole area has over 900,000 square meters but the whole medium-rise building only has over 5,000 square meters. (FREEMAN)