Council submits position paper on segregation of CJH barangays

City officials recently submitted their position paper on House Bill (HB) 9428 declaring as alienable and disposable certain parcels of land of the public domain located in Baguio city for disposition to actual and qualified occupants, excluding the said lands from the coverage of Republic Act (RA) 7227 otherwise known as the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) law and Proclamation No. 420, series of 1994 that transferred the John Hay air station to BCDA.

Under Resolution No. 762, series of 2023, local legislators stated that with the proposed segregation, it is expected that BCDA will have no control and may not interfere with governance of the segregated areas.

Further, some of the affected areas are ancestral domains and there are also areas where there are ancestral claims which should be addressed in the proposed consultations on this bill.

During the hearing of the House committee on natural resources held last November 29, 2023 on this bill, Rep. Mark Go, who is the bill’s principal author, manifested to conduct public consultations on the bill with stakeholders.

The body stipulated that the segregation of affected barangays from CJH is a condition imposed by the city government in the formulation by the BCDA of the master development for Camp John Hay. It is provided as Condition No. 14 in Resolution No. 362, series of 1994.

Moreover, the formulation of the CJH master development plan incorporated the 19 conditions provided in the resolution.

Resolution No. 362, series of 1994 and the conditionalities that have been set were recognized by the Supreme Court.

With the incorporation of the 19 conditionalities in the CJH master development plan, the city government adopted Resolution No. 349, series of 1996 approving the provisions of the CJH master development plan prepared for the BCDA by the Planning Resources and Operation System (PROS) as contained in its final order dated October 1996 which conforms with the 19 conditionalities set forth in the earlier resolution.

The council emphasized that the city government has been seeking the implementation of the segregation or exclusion of the affected barangays through numerous resolutions that had been passed for the said purpose.

HB 9427 which intends to declare as alienable and disposable certain parcels of land of the public domain located in Baguio city for disposition to actual and qualified occupants, excluding the said lands from the coverage of RA 7227 and Proclamation No. 420, series of 1994 which transferred John Hay air station to BCDA will need further study and proper consultations because the areas in the different barangays to be segregated from CJH will required identification, verification and validation for the proper application; the system of segregation as provided in the bill that will appear to be like the Scout Barrio model may not be appropriate for application for the covered areas, besides, the proceeds of the sales of the lots should not only be for BCD; the bill should consider total segregation of the barangays as requested to be done in accordance to Resolution NO. 152, series of 2013, taking one of the fact that the segregation undertaken for Scout Barrio was not complete as generated lots covering unoccupied areas and institutional areas that included roads and areas occupied by a school, church, police outpost, public structures and others are yet to be transferred and the area transferred to BCDA by virtue of RA 7227 will not further verification, validation and acceptance. – Dexter A. See