MMDA chair: New capital doable in 6 yrs

The head of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) threw his support behind the Senate bill seeking the transfer of the country’s seat of power, saying it could be done in six years at the minimum.

MMDA Chair Francis Tolentino, who made a similar proposal in 2012, found an ally in Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV who had filed Senate Bill No. 655 asking Congress to create a National Capital Commission (NPC) to study the possible relocation of the national capital.

“We are supporting the bill filed by Senator Trillanes. He’s right about the need to set up a commission to study the relocation of the capital as what has been done in other countries,” Tolentino told reporters on Tuesday.

In a 2012 book titled “A New City—A New Metro Manila, A New Future,” Tolentino noted that the National Capital Region was already “bursting” and faced with the problem of “overcapacity.”

He then proposed possible locations for the new urban center, such as Tanay in Rizal province or the area covered by the towns of San Rafael, San Ildefonso and Doña Remedios Trinidad in Bulacan province.

Doña Remedios in Bulacan, for example, is “a pristine area surrounded by mountains, rich in natural resources and rarely hit by typhoons,” Tolentino wrote.

Unlike Metro Manila, the proposed areas are not in the range of an earthquake fault, he added. The new site “should be near Metro Manila, like Putrajaya of Malaysia is to Kuala Lumpur.”

In Brazil, he said, it took only six years for the government to build the new federal center in Brasilia and replace the congested Rio de Janeiro.

“The transfer of a portion of the capital will cost less than what we are losing to traffic, flood problems and disaster recovery, and all that stress the people had to go through,” he said.