Mar Roxas says EO legal for one-Negros region

BACOLOD CITY—Local Government Secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas on Tuesday said there was no need to pass a law to create a Negros Island region, which could be done through an executive order (EO) by the President.

He, however, asked officials of the two Negros provinces—Occidental and Oriental—to supply data and justify the issuance of an EO, which, Roxas said, could be done before 2016.

Roxas was at a consultation meeting at the provincial capitol here with 178 officials and representatives from different sectors of the two provinces.

According to Roxas, studies made by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) supported proposals for President Aquino to just issue an EO to create the one-island region.

Proponents, he said, need only to justify the issuance of an EO.

Cost study

Roxas said the Department of Budget and Management was finishing its own study on the costs of creating a new region.

Some proponents want the regional capital to be either Bacolod or Dumaguete City. Others want the regional capital to be at the border of Mabinay town and Kabankalan City.

Offices for at least 30 national government agencies have to be built in the new region, according to Roxas, and this would be expensive.

The cost of running a regional office for the DILG alone, he said, is at least P45 million a year.

Alfredo Marañon Jr., governor of Negros Occidental, said unifying the two Negros provinces into a single region would benefit both.

No rush

But Roel Degamo, governor of Negros Oriental, said there was no need to rush things, adding that more data were needed to show that a new region would benefit his province’s people.

Ed Du, head of the Negros Oriental Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said there was no need to spend billions of pesos on the new region if his proposal was adopted.

He said that instead of spending up to P5 billion on new buildings and P1.2 billion for the operations of new offices, the government could simply convert all provincial offices of national government agencies into regional offices.