IT’s totally dismaying that despite being a priority measure by the administration of President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., a Senate committee appears to be unperturbed.
We’re referring to the House-approved National Land Use Act (House Bill 8162), which in spite of its enactment from the lower chamber as early as May 2023, its counterpart at the upper chamber seemed to be sitting on it for the reason, according to our source, only known to the committee chair – Senator Cynthia Villar.
We couldn’t blame if veteran Las Piñas City Councilor and congressional candidate Mark Anthony Santos would go after the outgoing senator as he saw the huge importance of the measure that needs a Senate action before the same is submitted to the President for his signature to officially declare it into a law.
He lamented that the proposed NLUA was immediately forwarded to the Senate committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change chaired by Villar who allegedly refused to attend to it.
“The NLUA is almost three decades old and advocates are finding it hard to hurdle the legislative mill.”
” Now that Congress approved the long overdue bill, Villar and her allies in the Senate intentionally disregard the measure because their businesses as a land developer will suffer and depreciate,” Santos said.
Villar’s family business is engaged in real estate, condominiums, retail industries, mining, malls, among others.
Santos said the NLUA was designed primarily to protect all prime agricultural lands in the country, something that, he said, would be contradicting Villars’ realty businesses.
The Chief Executive has identified NLUA as one of the priorities of his administration’s legislative agenda during his first State- of-the-Nation Address in 2022.
The NLUA implementation will integrate all mandates and policies on the use and protection of lands, including parameters that will guide planning at both national and local levels.
Santos said the NLUA bill was approved via vote of 262-3-0 (yes-no-abstain) during plenary session on May 22 last year but “it remains sleeping for almost 18 months at Villar’s committee”.