‘RECLAMATION’ IN GUSA? Trucks and other vehicles, drums and construction materials pile up and nearly encroach on the highway in Barangay Gusa in front of a construction supply store owned by controversial businessman and Barangay 33 chairman Conrad Lim whose reclamation at the foreshore in neighboring Barangay Lapasan is standing in the way of a coastal road project of the public works department. The Lapasan reclamation has delayed the construction and opening of the four-lane road seen
By NITZ ARANCONCorrespondent
UNLESS businessman and Barangay 33 chairman shows that he owns the controversial reclamation in Barangay Lapasan, the government cannot pay him.
This was the opinion of lawyer and former vice mayor Antonio Soriano even as he called on the government to exercise its power of eminent domain or take the disputed Lapasan property for public use.
But while the government cannot pay Lim in the absence of a proof of ownership, Soriano said, there should not be shortcuts in the legal process.
The DPWH, he said, should immediately file a case so that a court could order Lim ejected.
Lawyer Rey Raagas, a former president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) chapter in Misamis Oriental and Cagayan de Oro, said should also show permits from the government to prove that he is not a “builder in bad faith.”
“If he (Lim) is a builder in bad faith, everything that he built there has to be demolished--there is nothing he can save,” Raagas said.
He said the government cannot expropriate anyone unless he or she is a “builder in good faith.”
Raagas added: “Expropriation means ikaw ang tag-iya. Pero kon walakay katugod diha unsa may bayran sa imo?”