Mayor Pablo Ortega, the City Council, including over 600 regular, casual and contractual employees wore black arm bands in the Monday flag-raising ceremony to protest the approval of 16 unqualified municipalities and 28 pending more, seeking for Congress’ citihood approval.
Earlier, Mayor Ortega and the League of Cities of the Philippines signed a petition expressing condemnation of the approval of the latest 16, claiming that each does not meet the requirements. As a result, the city incurred a cut in the Internal Revenue Allotment of P23-million from the national government coffers.
The LCP, headed by Muntinlupa City Mayor Benhur Abalos, also wants House Bill 24, authored by Zamboanga-Sibugay Rep. Ann Hofer, which proposes to automatically elevate to citihood the capital towns of the 28 provinces which do not have cities, junked and the initial 16 others nullified by the Supreme Court, it was learned.
Hofer’s bill also wants to lower the income requirement for citihood which it believes put to unfair restriction on economic growth of provinces that have no cities.
According to Mayor Ortega, out of the original 18 newly-approved cities, only Navotas and San Juan in the province of Rizal, were qualified for citihood.
“We don’t understand why the other 16 were approved, not that we don’t want them to become cities but it was clear they don’t meet the requirements,” Mayor Ortega stressed.
The Mayor added that a municipality which converts into a city must have a population of 150,000, with an annual income of P100-million and has a land area of not less than 70,000 hectares.
“The city mayors’ League has talked with President (Gloria) Arroyo, we don’t know yet what actions will be taken, if they don’t recognize our protest, we will wear black arm bands every Monday until they will listen to our protests” he added, “we are afraid that if they approved 27 additional applicants, we will lose up to P30-million IRA, if not bigger.”
He argued that not all 27 are qualified as opined by the LCP. He also criticized the congressmen in their respective districts for maximizing all efforts and remedies just so they earn the approval without qualifications.
If approved, existing and new cities will share the IRA from the national government annual budget.
“The law is very clear, these congressmen try to amend them, which are very unfair to the existing cities that met difficulties for citihood,” the Mayor said.
The mayor also reported that if the city conversion of unqualified municipalities continues, all existing cities in the LCP would convert to the old municipalities’ status.
“It is better, if the 27 additional are approved, ‘presidentiable’ senators won’t even get our support in 2010” he ended.
The stand, according to him, is the LCP ultimate action after they conferred Senate Pres. Manuel Villar, a “presidentiable,” claiming that some congressmen, involved into seeking citihood for their districts, were allegedly pressuring him to get Senate’s nod. |
