BAGUIO CITY—The state-run Philippine National Railways (PNR) has started selling 26 prime assets, including high-value properties in the city and in Tuba, Benguet province, that it no longer needs for a now-abandoned train project that would have connected Baguio to Aringay, La Union province.
Last week, PNR representatives met with Baguio and Tuba families, who have been occupying PNR lots and have offered to buy these.
PNR is selling its properties here at the behest of its board of directors to pay a P164-million loan it took out to finance its operations, Herminio del Rosario, chief of PNR’s assets management division, told the Inquirer by telephone.
Most of the PNR properties in Baguio and Tuba were bought by the American colonial government when it launched a train project that would connect the lowland provinces to Baguio and Benguet mines in the early 1900s, Del Rosario said.
He said the proposed railway would have run from La Union but the American engineers had considered two options for the train to reach Baguio: Via Kennon Road or through what is now Asin Road village in Tuba.
That train system would have ended at the PNR property now known as Marcoville village, near what used to be the city’s PNR terminal on upper Session Road.
Settlers have since occupied most of these PNR lots, including sections of Asin now dotted with resorts, he said.
Del Rosario said PNR’s properties in Baguio are much-coveted assets and have drawn interest from investors, encouraging the PNR board to approve their sale.
But this has complicated talks over properties occupied by people.
More than 500 families live on the 770-square-meter lot in Marcoville, now a commercial area. Lawyer Alvin Claridades, who represented the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) in the PNR dialogue on Wednesday, said the families find the price for the land too high.
HUDCC and PNR have partnered to convert PNR lands within residential areas into social housing projects. HUDCC offered to subsidize the cost of PNR land, which would be paid in installments by the beneficiary residents, Del Rosario said.
In a November meeting, he said, HUDCC had asked the PNR board to spare Marcoville and classify it, too, as a social housing project.
PNR also sold a piece of land here occupied by the Benguet rice warehouse of the National Food Authority (NFA), causing some friction between the two government agencies.
Del Rosario said the 600-square-meter PNR lot occupied by the NFA warehouse was part of the property it sold in December last year to a bus company that had put up a terminal nearby.
Cecilia Concubierta, NFA Benguet provincial manager, said the sale to the bus company took her by surprise. The bus company issued an eviction notice on Jan. 8. This was followed by a vacate order from PNR on Jan. 11. With a report from Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon