CEBU, Philippines — A task force is now underway to recover more than a thousand Cebu City-owned lots, said Cebu City acting Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia.
Garcia said there are a number of city-owned lots that the city government will now start to recover. This is after Councilor Jerry Guardo, chairman of the Committee on Infrastructure of the city council, called upon the acting mayor to form a task force that will focus on the recovery of the city- owned lots.
According to Garcia, most of these lot titles are yet to be transferred to the city government. Although the primary objective is to open city-owned road networks, Garcia said the government cannot also maintain roads that are not owned by the government.
"Remember the city cannot maintain the street, or the road, if we do not own it. Because we cannot spend government funds to maintain private property," said Garcia.
Citing the road network in Beverly Hills, Garcia said that these lots will have to be donated to the city government so that it could be rehabilitated and maintained.
"But the problem here is wala gyuy nagtutok nga kanang mga road lots nga titled and kanang under tax declaration, dili pa transferred sa name sa city, so mao na atong buhaton," said Garcia.
This will now be the duties and responsibilities of the task force which will be primarily headed by the Department of General Services alongside the City Assessor's Office. Also included as members of the task force are Cebu City Engineers, and a battery of lawyers. This group will also safeguard the properties of the government.
"Remember nga there were a lot of properties here nga way bayad-bayad sa Real Property Tax (RPT) and under the law what we are going to do is we are going to auction it, sell it to interested buyers para mahalin then ang taxes maadto sa city government," said Garcia.
Properties that are not sold during the auction will be automatically donated to the city government. The task force will be officially created within the week. (CEBU NEWS)