IN a bid to give solution to the complicated Chocolate Hills fiasco, Congresswomen Alexie B. Tutor (3rd district) and Vanessa C. Aumentado (2nd district) have painstakingly explained the proposed amendments of the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System (E-NIPAS) or R.A. 11038 to the members of the Protected Area Management Board during its meeting held at the new Capitol sometime last week.
“Lives of families and communities as well as economic activities and public service stand to be sacrificed with the blanket declaration as protected areas of almost 14,000 hectare shared by all these three legislative districts,” Tutor and Aumentado said in their explanatory note of the House Bill No. 10438.
The proposed bill was prompted after the controversy erupted and generated by the Captain’s Peak Resort, in barangay Canmano, Sagbayan town, which a mayor’s permit to operate but did not have the required Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) issued by the Department of environment and Natural Resources.
The said fiasco has sparked the Ombudsman’s order on May 20, 2024 of suspension for six months of 69 local officials while investigating the total of 147 officials.
The said Bill is mainly sponsored by Tutor, Aumentado, Rep. Edgar Chatto and Palawan’s 2nd district Rep. Jose C. Alvarez.
The said House Bill is seeking to “Establish the coverage of the Chocolate Hills Natural Monument (CHNM), amending the composition of the CHNM PAMB and for other purposes in relation to Republic Act No. 11038, or the E-NIPAS Act.
The said coverage that earlier set by Presidential Proclamation No. 1037 and amended by Proclamation 333, series of 2003 aims to include the protected area of 1,776 hills and timberland areas and the so-called drawback of 20 meters from the baseline of the hills.
Under section 2 of the bill provides that all existing residential structures prior to E-NIPAS within the 2-meter drawback shall be allowed to remain, improved and repaired but no expansion of the same will be done. The owner of said residential edifice is considered as a tenured migrant and allowed to plant trees and other agricultural crops and harvest them and engage in small scale livelihood projects.
The existing commercial structures without PAMB’s clearance and without ECC will be demolished for not over two years.
All existing public infrastructures and proposed government properties for public use situated within 2-meter drawback shall be allowed as long as the said infrastructures and projects will not be harmful to the natural state of the hills and its buffer zone.
Excluded in the protected areas are those alienable and disposable and flat lands outside the 20-meter drawback below 18 degrees in slope, section of the bill said.
The Department of Tourism, National Museum, UNESCO Technical Committee of Bohol and representatives of religious groups and environmental planners and architects within the area are members of the CHNM PAMB.
Senators and congressmen from the area will sit as ex-officio member of PAMB without voting right but shall exercise oversight functions in the PAMB-sanctioned project/plan/program implementation.
The funds needed to carry out the bill, when approved, are being provided and included in the General Appropriations Act, Tutor said.
DENR Asst. Regional Director Charlie Fabre presided over the said PAMB meeting and acting governor Board Member Tita V. Baja, Congw. Aumentado and other officials attended and participated in the said meeting. (rvo)
