THE Cebu Provincial Board (PB) yesterday authorized Gov. Hilario Davide III to sign a deed of donation for a 3,000-square-meter lot to be used for the construction of a new building of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
PB Member Grecilda Sanchez, sponsor of the resolution granting Davide the authority, said that an outright donation is needed for the DOJ to construct a building on the lot.
“They can’t construct (anything) if the lot is not theirs,” Sanchez said during the board’s regular session yesterday.
The 3,000-square-meter lot to be donated to the DOJ is within the Department of Agriculture Central Visayas (DA-7) compound along M. Velez Street, where the Office of the Ombudsman is also housed.
In January this year, former Justice secretary and now Supreme Court Associate Justice Benjamin Caguioa sent Davide a letter requesting for the lot donation from the provincial government.
The requested lot will be used to accommodate the new regional office of the DOJ as well as the offices of the Regional State Prosecutor, Provincial Prosecutor, Cebu City Prosecutor, and Public Attorney.
All Cebu City courts are holding office at the Qimonda IT Center at the North Reclamation Area upon the order of Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno after the Marcelo B. Fernan Hall of Justice, the four-story courthouse inside the Capitol compound, was declared unsafe by the Office of the Building Officials when it was damaged by the 7.2-magnitude earthquake in 2013 that jolted the provinces of Cebu and Bohol.
Davide also asked the DOJ last January for the Capitol to use the damaged building as an extension of the Executive Building.