Baguio to take over DA-run ‘Maharlika’

LANDMARK The Maharlika Livelihood Complex, built in the early 1980s and acquired by the government through the efforts of former first lady Imelda Marcos, has become a Baguio City landmark where tourists shop for souvenirs, handicrafts, woodcarvings, and even silver jewelry. —NEIL CLARK ONGCHANGCO

BAGUIO CITY — The last surviving livelihood project that was developed by former first lady Imelda Marcos in the early 1980s will be turned over to Baguio City in 2025, so its administrators are working double time to resolve its financial and legal issues, the city council was told this week.

The land lease rights of the Maharlika Livelihood Complex will expire on April 27, 2025, according to a management team commissioned by the government-owned Human Settlements Development Corp. (HSDC), which owns the facility.

Situated beside the Baguio City public market, Maharlika was built on a 3-hectare prime government land in the city center to house vendors displaced by the 1970 fire that destroyed the original Baguio stone market.

It has since become the retail hub for artisanal crafts and souvenirs and is a local landmark for its design that mirrors the rice terraces of Ifugao.

The Maharlika complex opened in 1982 after the defunct Ministry of Human Settlements acquired the rights owned by a private developer.

The ministry was led at the time by Mrs. Marcos. Maharlika is now administered by the Department of Agriculture (DA), which is under the supervision of President Marcos Jr., the former first lady’s son.

The HSDC, an agency attached to the DA, had offered to return the facility to the Baguio government in 2019 ahead of its lease’s termination, but talks were suspended when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, according to lawyer Maan Grace Elago, Maharlika project manager.

Transition

Elago said the HSDC is undergoing a transition process in preparation for its abolition, which was recommended as far back as 2013 by Malacañang. Managers overseeing Maharlika’s operations have changed four times in 2022 alone.

But an HSDC transitional committee has tasked Jennylyn Dawayan, DA regional technical director in the Cordillera, to negotiate and resolve these issues before Maharlika’s scheduled turnover to Baguio, she told the city council.

The council had directed HSDC to submit a full accounting of Maharlika’s operations.

Councilor Fred Bagbagen, a lawyer, said the city government needed to make sure it would take back the facility without any legal problems, which could include uncollected rentals from previous occupants.

Elago addressed the council due to allegations that HSDC has been collecting excessive fees from its tenants.

Maharlika has more than 600 tenants, but only 28 of them have arrears and other delinquencies, said lawyer Ace Aries Solda, Maharlika’s project evaluation officer.

Pandemic impact

Businessman Geronimo Vergonia, who spoke on behalf of 26 Maharlika tenants, said they were asked to pay what he described as “exorbitant rental and utility fees and surcharges” at the start of the year, covering the period when a Luzon-wide lockdown and subsequent community quarantines restricted all commercial operations.

“The pandemic deepened income gaps, hurt the poor more, and exacerbated existing inequalities in the country,” according to the tenants’ position paper.

They accused HSDC of “insensitivity” and non-transparency for charging one of the tenants as much as P130,000 for unpaid electricity, without explaining how the back fees were computed.

But Vergonia said he would continue holding dialogues with Elago and Solda, who took over management at the beginning of 2023.

According to a 2021 Commission on Audit (COA) report, the fate of Maharlika has hampered “the complete liquidation of the affairs of the HSDC despite the lapse of right years from the approval of its abolition by the Office of the President of the Philippines (under then President Benigno Aquino III) on Nov. 26, 2013.”

The COA urged the DA to resolve the status of Maharlika’s lease with the Baguio government.

READ: No need for bank loan to rehabilitate hotel Imelda Marcos built — Tacloban mayor