DESIRED LOCATION After dealing with armed groups and business interests trying to encroach on the protected area it is tasked to manage, looks like the Masungi Georeserve Foundation faces another, tougher challenge: the Bureau of Corrections wants a large piece of the area—270 hectares of it—for its own use, citing a need to relocate its headquarters from New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City. —Photos from Masungi Georeserve Foundation/NIÑO JESUS ORBETA
The Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) will push through with its plan to transfer its headquarters to a 270-hectare section of the Masungi Georeserve in Rizal province, despite opposition from the protected area’s private caretaker.
Contrary to the claims of Masungi Georeserve Foundation Inc. (MGFI), BuCor acting Director General Gregorio Catapang Jr. on Friday said that New Bilibid Prison (NBP) would not be relocated to the property, which straddles four barangays in the municipality of Tanay.
Instead, that location would be the new site of the BuCor headquarters, which is now inside the NBP compound in Muntinlupa City. BuCor would also build housing units for its personnel there and a supposed agro-production area “for the sustainment of its basic institutional food requirements.”
Part of dev’t plan
Details on what structures would be built and their feasibility were not available on Friday, but Catapang said the proposal to move the headquarters to Tanay was pursuant to BuCor’s five-year development plan.
The plan has already been drafted and approved in line with the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028 of President Marcos, he said.
The BuCor headquarters currently occupies 254.73 ha out of the 551-ha NBP Reservation in Barangay Poblacion in Muntinlupa.
A separate NBP Master Development Plan, which is based on Proclamation No. 1159 signed by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Sept. 8, 2006, would convert the remaining 366.7 ha of the NBP reservation into a mix-used complex to generate funds for the national government.
One problem that the planned new location in Tanay might encounter is how to develop BuCor’s agro-production area without prison labor. Its current agro-production area in Muntinlupa is being run by minimum security inmates.
BuCor acquired the right to the Tanay property when Arroyo signed Proclamation No. 1158, also on Sept. 8, 2006, reserving a 270-ha parcel of government-owned land in Barangays Cuyumbay, Laiban, San Andres and Tinucan in Tanay. The proclamation said it would be the “new site of the New Bilibid Prison.”
The proclamation also set a separate 30-ha lot for a field office for the Calabarzon region of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and for a tree nursery.
These lands were originally under the name of the national government in the Original Certificate of Title No. 3556, issued by the registry of deeds of Rizal on March 29, 1963.TCT issued 2022
BuCor officially gained ownership of the Tanay property under Transfer Certificate of Title (TCT) No. 069-2022010986, which was put on the books of the registry of deeds of Morong, Rizal, on Sept. 28, 2022.
On Feb. 8, a tax declaration (TD No. 18-TN-003-01994) under the name of BuCor was issued by the local government of Tanay, solidifying proof of its ownership.
“Existing jurisprudence dictates that until and unless it is nullified by a court of competent jurisdiction in direct proceedings for the cancellation of title, the TCT issued under the name of BuCor remains indefeasible and binding upon the whole world,” Catapang said in a statement.
Catapang has been serving as BuCor’s chief for almost five months after replacing Gerald Bantag, who is facing murder charges for the death of broadcaster and vlogger Percival “Percy Lapid” Mabasa last year.
He said he “whole-heartedly” supported the Masungi foundation and its projects.
“I am a proenvironmentalist and would not oppose any plan of the foundation that would gear toward the conservation of our ecosystem,” Catapang said.
But as BuCor chief, he needed to perform his task of institutionalizing a “highly efficient and competent correction services that include its land-use programs not only for administrative purposes but also [for] other programs that will promote sustainability, self-sufficiency, administrative economy and promotion.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF MASUNGI GEORESERVE FOUNDATION
Ocular inspection
About 20 BuCor personnel visited the site for an “ocular inspection” on Thursday, surprising the Masungi Foundation staff, said Ann Dumaliang, a trustee of tMGFI.
While they welcomed Catapang’s appreciation of their conservation efforts, Dumaliang reiterated the foundation’s appeal to BuCor to put the interest of the protected area above its relocation plans.
The georeserve includes parts of the Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape and also serves as a natural filter for waterways to its nearby areas, including Metro Manila.
“It is with this mindset and encouragement that we appeal to [Catapang] to consider the environment as central to all issues and reconsider BuCor’s plans,” Dumaliang told the Inquirer in a Viber message.
“While it might not be straightforward and obvious, Masungi firmly believes that the present legal system gives premium to the environment and its protection,” she said.
Dumaliang also called on the President and Environment Secretary Ma. Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga to intervene to resolve dispute in favor of the protected area.
She said the foundation was ready to sit down and discuss the issue with Catapang and Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla.
“We also want them to visit the place so they can see for themselves the area,” she added, noting that the area was mountainous and geologically “unbuildable.”
Armed men
The TCT in the name of BuCor pertains to an area designated as “Lot 10,” which is part of the Masungi Georeserve.
Coincidentally, it was on Lot 10 where more than a dozen armed men encamped in September last year, alarming the foundation staff.
Their presence prompted Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos and top police officials to visit the site to investigate, but the armed men had left before they arrived.
Dumaliang explained that the contested lot was part of the areas committed to a 2002 joint venture agreement between the DENR and Blue Star, Masungi’s partner engineering company.
Seven years later, then-DENR Secretary Lito Atienza issued a memorandum ordering the DENR Calabarzon office to present an alternative area for the proposed BuCor headquarters within the Rizal “not later than 30 April 2009.”
According to Dumaliang, Atienza’s memo was in compliance with the joint venture agreement since the contested lot was “already subject to private rights.”
“It’s been a decade already and the discussion on these issues should have been done a long time,” she said.
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