Gov’t speeds up public school sites titling
ROXAS CITY – The government has ordered the fast tracking of titling of public school sites in the country.
Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Lito Atienza recently directed the agency’s lands bureau to speed up the titling of lands occupied by the public schools to have legal basis of ownership.
Atienza explained in an online news that the legal basis of ownership of public school sites is very important in the national effort to improve the country’s public educational system.
In July 2007, the DENR and the Department of Education (DepEd) forged a memorandum of agreement to step up the processing and issuance of presidential proclamations for 5,132 school sites nationwide.
The agreement, Atienza said, was prompted by a study by DepEd that about 8,000 sites nationwide have been continuously occupied for decades by public elementary and secondary schools without appropriate land titles but only with deeds of donations.
On the other hand, Land Management Bureau Director Gerino Tolentino revealed that under the DENR-DepEd agreement, 16 school sites have already been issued with presidential proclamations by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and 31 more are under process.
Tolentino said that Presidential Proclamations were already issued to two school sites in Cordillera Autonomous Region, four in Region 2, two in Region 3, two in Region 4A, one in Region V, four in Region 11.
Meanwhile, the lands bureau is currently preparing the presidential proclamations for 31 more school sites, he said.
He stressed that said sites include three schools sites in CAR, two in Region 1, seven in Region 3, one in Region 6, two in Region 7, one in Region 8, nine in Region 10, four in Region 11, and two in Region 13. (PIA/Jemin B. Guillermo)