A lawmaker has proposed placing all untitled lands utilized by public schools across the country under the permanent ownership of the Department of Education (DepEd), to protect schools from possible land disputes.
Parañaque Rep. Brian Raymund Yamsuan explained in a statement that his House Bill (HB) No. 9477, while not focused on the engineering aspects of constructing classrooms, will be of great help to DepEd’s programs because it provides a sense of security that the lands used cannot be claimed by other parties.
‘While not an engineering safeguard, our proposal to secure government ownership of land housing public schools would greatly contribute to the unhampered implementation of long-term safety measures for these structures, such as earthquake retrofitting, rehabilitation, and other improvements which often require clear legal rights over the land they stand on,’ Yamsuan said on Wednesday.
‘No amount of funding or accelerated construction of school buildings will resolve our perennial classroom backlog if the lands for public school sites remain open to dispute because of incomplete documentation and lack of legal property rights,’ he added.
Under the bill, all lands utilized by DepEd and public school sites will be registered under its name, including those used by the agency’s predecessors – the Bureau of Education, the Office of Education by the Government of the Philippines, the Ministry of Education, and the Department of Education, Culture and Sports.
‘For purposes of this Act, a ‘Public School Site’ refers to public schools utilized by DepEd or sites catering to the needs of DepEd which are necessary or vital to the performance of its mandate or functions,’ the bill stated.
‘These shall include areas and locations of DepEd offices, training facilities, teachers’ camp, or commercial spaces incidental to school operations deriving income for the benefit of the public,’ it added.
The bill states that if a land has been in ‘in open, continuous, exclusive, and notorious possession over the property for at least ten years,’ DepEd can submit an Affidavit of Claim to the Registry of Deeds containing the following documents:
mode of acquiring ownership over the property
the circumstances and/or proof of open, continuous, exclusive, and notoriouspossession over the property for ten (10) years
Proof of publication of the Notice of Ownership Claim in a newspaper of generalcirculation and notification to the registered owners or other interested persons
Proof of posting of the Notice of Ownership Claim for three consecutiveweeks in a conspicuous place located within the Public School Site, and in the Barangay Hall and City or Municipal Hall that have territorial jurisdiction over the Public School Sites
Yamsuan said this measure is important because it would remove one problem from DepEd’s shoulders.
‘We need clean land titles to ensure that DepEd does not encounter problems in constructing school buildings and the upgrading or expanding of facilities to ensure the safe and efficient delivery of quality education,’ he said.
‘The DepEd can’t do what needs to be done if it continues to be burdened with missing deeds, donated lots that lack proper legal documentation, overlapping claims, or decades-old usufruct agreements,’ he added.
Yamsuan was referring to DepEd’s huge classroom backlog, which requires the construction of 165,000 rooms.
Last February, Yamsuan also said that he has filed HB No. 7632 or the proposed Classroom-Building Acceleration Program (CAP) Act which seeks to give the private sector a bigger role in classroom construction, to address the country’s staggering backlog.
Under the measure, the DepEd will be allowed to delegate the construction of certain classrooms to local government units (LGUs) and civil society organizations (CSOs).
Yamsuan said that the country’s classroom shortage should be addressed soon because more classrooms – around 51,000 – may reach the end of their 50-year structural lifespan by 2028.
The bill is part of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac) list of priority bills that was recently approved by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.