Bid to open up Bantayan to land titling, ownership stalls at Senate

EYESOREA policeman asks a camper to relocate his tent on the beach during an influx of visitors on Bantayan Island in June. LITO TECSON/CEBU DAILY NEWS

BANTAYAN ISLAND, Cebu — Businesses and lot owners on Bantayan Island will have to wait a little more to get titles.

A bill seeking to convert the status of the island from wilderness and protected area to alienable and disposable through legislation was apparently not among the priorities of the Senate.

During the Bantayan Island Stakeholders Forum on Saturday, Sen. Cynthia Villar, chair of the Senate committee on environment and natural resources, said her committee would hold a hearing on the bill when Congress goes on a break next week.

“Actually, this is the first time I’m hearing such a case,” said Villar, the country’s richest senator.

Reversal

She said her committee had been able to have 94 areas in the country as “additional protected areas” and not the other way around.

According to Villar, she was unaware of the request by the people of Bantayan to classify the island as alienable and disposable.

But she said the bill would be taken up by her committee although it could not be done within the year.

Senate priority, Villar said, remained to be the approval of the proposed national budget next year.

Also, half of senators was expected to be preoccupied with plans for next year’s elections.

By December, Congress will go on another break for the holidays.
Marcos decree
Villar said she would also have to discuss, with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the legality of lifting the protected area status of Bantayan since this was the first time she heard about such a request.

“But I will try my best,” she said.

Presidential Decree No. 2151 issued by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1981 listed Bantayan as among areas declared as wilderness.

This meant the entire island cannot be privately owned, or titled.

According to local officials, the original intention was to declare only around 4,000 hectares of the island as wilderness area.

But as it turned out, the decree had included all of the 14,000-hectare Bantayan Island as wilderness area.

Engineer Nelson Yuvallos, president of the Santa Fe Tourism Enterprises Association, said businesses in three towns on the island had been clamoring for the lifting of the island’s wilderness status.

“The lots where our businesses stand are not or cannot even be considered as ours,” he said.

Only caretakers

“We, who own the businesses, are only caretakers as of today,” he added.

In 2014, Cebu Rep. Benhur Salimbangon filed the bill to change the island’s status from wilderness to alienable.

But the Senate version was not approved in the absence of a detailed plan for the island.

In 2015, the DENR formed a technical working group to craft the plan.

The plan was approved by then Environment Secretary Gina Lopez in 2016 upon lobbying by the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas.

The bill remained pending at the Senate committee on environment.