Govt agencies, non-profits support passage of bill
By Veronica Uy
Conflicts involving land use such as the construction of a resort in the tourism destination Chocolate Hills in Bohol, the drawn-out territorial dispute between Makati and Taguig, and the controversial conversions of agricultural farms to residential subdivisions, are avoidable.
This is according to the Departments of Agrarian Reform, Environment and Natural Resources, Human Settlements and Urban Development, Interior and Local Government, the National Commission on Indigenous People, and local government units plus various non-profit organizations that expressed support for the passage of the National Land Use Act.
The proposed measure of Siargao Rep. Francisco Jose “Bingo” Matugas II is the nth iteration of the bill. And participants to the Land Use Summit 2024 forum, which has the theme “National Land Use for Sustainable Development, Food Security, and Climate Change,” said the bill is the best so far as it will resolve the ongoing conflicts among government agencies.
Over the 30 years since it was first introduced in Congress, government agencies have separately instituted their own dispute mechanisms in the absence of an overall national policy or agency on land use.
“With the passage of the law, there will be a commission, a super body comprising of all these agencies, under the office of the President, headed by a commissioner and deputy commissioners. They’ll be responsible for ensuring that all the functions of four levels—municipal, provincial, regional, national—with regard to the national framework, to the physical plans, and all policies pertinent thereto, are coming from this commission,” said Agrarian Reform Undersecretary Luis Pangulayan.
Undersecretary Pangulayan, who is a lawyer, said that once enacted into law, the bill will address issues of land-use classification, policies, and actual land use. He said it has not become law since it was first introduced in 1994 because of conflicting interests.
“The delay is due to varying interests and mandates…The commission which will be created by the law will help in the convergence of policies… Hopefully it will pass. I think Senator Cynthia Villar will be amenable to the bill because then she only has to talk to one agency, not the many that are now involved in the conversion of agricultural lands to residential subdivisions,” he said, noting that the senator, whose family business has become one of the largest real-estate companies in the country, has always complied with conversion requirements.
Undersecretary Pangulayan gave the assurance that the commission will have a strong say in national land-use.
“Other agencies can ignore an inter-agency body. But a commissioner with the President’s blessings can actually instruct all concerned agencies into executing the commission’s policies,” he said. “It will have a clear mandate under the Office of the President. He will be the Toscanini, the conductor, of national land use. While he will only have two deputies with a small budget, the commission will be a super body.”
He said the new body will not be a redundancy to the bureaucracy.
“We will all sit in the commission. We’ll all follow the conductor. The centralized body will act as the super body that will be involved in the formulation of policies, monitoring, and enforcement. All the policies that this commission will formulate will trickle down to the separate agencies and will use these policies for their respective mandates,” he said.
Undersecretary Pangulayan said he is confident the law will pass as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has indicated that this is a priority bill.
“I hope the bill will pass. President Bongbong is different. He wants his legacy. I thought he would not sign the bill condoning farmers who have not paid for the farms distributed to them, but he did. He will not create a bureaucracy to slow down the delivery of government service, but a sort of central apparatus. And we will follow him as president. We will sing the same song, the same tune,” he said.