Rama distributes 59 homelot titles

DREAM LAND. Cipriano Perolino, 72, was one of the 59 individuals awarded with land titles for their homelots by the Cebu City government

Cirpriano Perolino, 72, now owns the lot that he has been squatting on for 54 years in Spolarium Street, Barangay Duljo Fatima in Cebu City.
Perolino was one of the 59 recipients of the lot titles distributed Tuesday by Mayor Michael Rama during the Charter Day celebration.

He said that he only spent P2,000 for the processing of documents to facilitate the transfer under his name of the title of the 34 square meters  government owned lot that he occupies.

“Lipay kaayo ko kay dugay na kaayo ni nako nga gi paabot nga maka panag-iya ko sa titulo sa yuta (I am so happy to get my homelot title, after waiting for so long),” he said.

Lawyer Jade Ponce, head of the Land Management Council (LMC), said the land title distribution is part of the city’s implementation of Republic Act 1023 or the Free Patent Law.

Ponce said that the law allows government to award public land to its occupants provided that they have been living in the area for the last 10 years and do not own properties in other parts of the city.  A third requirement is that the lot they occupy should not be more than 200 square meters.

“The public land being referred to in the law is land that is not used for any other purpose by government and is occupied by people for at least 10 years,” he said.

Ponce said LMC and the Department for the Welfare of the Urban Poor (DWUP) is now working on the lot title application of about 200 families from barangays Duljo Fatima, Tinago, Carreta and Tejero in Cebu City.

Yesterday Mayor Rama led the distribution of titles to the first 59 beneficiaries coming from Duljo Fatima – 30 families and Tinago – 29 families.

Ponce said that applicants will have to file their land ownership application with LMC so that they could also be subjected to background investigation to determine if they qualify under the Free Patent Law.

“But they also have to know that ownership of the land comes with a responsibility,” he said.

Land owners, Ponce said, will not be required to pay real property taxes to the city and protect their titles to make sure that these are not lost or that the properties awarded to them will not be claimed by another claimant.

New owners, he said, will also have to coordinate with the city government to bring improvements like wider access roads into their areas.

Perolino, a native of Guilhongan in Negros Orriental, said he arrived in Cebu City in 1956 to work as a baker.

When he married in 1960, he leased a shanty built along the coastal area of barangay Duljo.  He said that he later paid P90 for the shanty which he now owns.

Perolino said that since their shanty would get submerged in seawater during high tide, he started to backfill the area where their shanty now stands.

He would collect rocks when he goes out into the sea to fish and other filling materials that he would find where ever he goes until neighbors also followed what he was doing.

Adding rocks and filling materials later reclaimed the area they occupy.  But he was still uncertain of his family’s future because the lot that they occupied is owned by government.

Perlino said he applied with MLC last year and paid P2,000 in October for processing the transfer of title of the 34 square meter government land that he now occupies.