93-1 Residents Safe from Eviction If Osmeña Wins

Cebu City South District Rep. Tomas Osmeña said if he and gubernatorial aspirant Hilario Davide III will win the elections on Monday he will pursue his earlier proposal for a landswap deal between the city and Province of Cebu to ensure that the “93-1 residents” will not be evicted from their locations.

But Osmeña said this time if the people would give him fresh mandate to manage Cebu City he will offer lots at the South Road Properties (SRP) for swapping and not anymore the four-hectare lot at the North Reclamation Area near SM City Mall.

During his stint as mayor, Osmeña offered a land swap deal with suspended governor Gwen Garcia, but it did not materialized because Garcia got mad when Mayor Michael Rama who used to be vice mayor delivered a speech before the City Council saying that the deal could be disadvantageous to the city.

The proposal fell apart after Garcia got mad at Rama, who said in his privilege speech, that the deal would mean a “Dawli or dawat-limpyo” for the province because the city will be doing the dirty work of collecting the money, while the province gets four hectares of clean property.

Osmeña admitted it would be easy for him to negotiate with the Capitol officials if Davide would be the one to win as governor against his rival gubernatorial candidate Pablo John Garcia.

In yesterday’s 888 News Forum at Marco Polo Hotel, Osmeña said once he will become city mayor again he will help the province of Cebu to improve by encouraging more investors to put up business in the municipalities.

He explained that it is not good if the people from the province would be trooping to Cebu City to look for jobs and live here because the city would be forced to provide them with benefits like scholarship program for the students and cash assistance to the senior citizens.

Osmeña said the city will become bankrupt if the present setup will continue that is why he wants that the province will also improve by bringing some investment there.

Of the 4,161 families occupying the 50.5 hectare province-owned lots situated in 11 barangays of the city, only 33 percent or 1,410 have fully paid their obligations and the rest had just partially paid or have not paid at all.

Then Cebu governor Vicente “Tingting” Dela Serna signed Provincial Ordinance 93-1 that allowed the actual occupants of the province-owned lots to purchase them through installment for a period of five years.

The term was extended for another five years after many of the occupants still failed to meet the payment schedule. In order to help the beneficiaries, then mayor Osmeña offered the land swap deal.