MindanaoToday.com | Phividec to give out houses for ‘settlers’
By: URIEL QUILINGUING
The administrator of the 3,000-hectare estate in Misamis Oriental of the Philippine Veterans Industrial Development Corporation (Phividec) announced on Tuesday, January 23, about 2,000 informal settlers within Tagoloan and Villanueva towns could acquire housing units in relocation sites within this year.
Lawyer Joseph Donato Bernedo, who is also Phividec’s chief executive officer since June last year, disclosed the socialized housing project in a press conference for the 50th Anniversary of the Phividec Industrial Authority (PIA). PIA-Misamis Oriental was created by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 538 on August 13, 1974.
Bernedo said the housing project, consisting of at least 3,000 units, will be implemented by PIA in coordination with the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) and Pag-IBIG (Pagtutulongan sa Kinabukasan: Ikaw, Bangko, Industriya, at Gobyerno).
He said the PIA Board has already approved the housing project and they got the assurance from DHSUD that once President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. arrives for the 50th PIA-MO Anniversary, either a capsule-laying or a turn-over ceremony of a house to the first informal-settler beneficiary would likely be the chief executive’s historic acts.
Beneficiaries, he said, are properly vetted by personnel who have been with PIA for decades, to make sure only those registered in their system can avail of the housing units.
By relocating informal settlers, PIA could “clear” about 900 hectares, acquire and develop for potential locators and service providers, on top of some 900 hectares that are already available either for heavy, medium and light industries. PIA-MO has 60 locator industries and over 100 service providers, at present.
In 2022, PIA-MO earned P1.142 billion and posted a net income of P794 million, according to the Commission on Audit (COA) annual report. MCT handled 470 vessels that year, of which 281 were foreign and 189 were domestic–a recovery year from the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Bernado admitted the Mindanao Container Terminal, a subsidiary of the International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI), that was incorporated in 2008 has breached its annual maximum capacity of 250,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) since 2017. He said its current 300-meter berthing space must be expanded to attract more shippers.
MCT is in a 24-hectare area, 11 hectares of which serve as container yard and 4.5 hectares for empty container depot while its controlling depth is 13 meters. About a hundred meters on both sides of the 300-meter berthing space, are vacant. Once expanded, two international container vessels with 2,000 TEUs can moor.
He said they are pursuing the MCT Phase 2 Expansion Project which the Regional Development Council (RDC) and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) in Northern Mindanao have endorsed. It has been listed second in the top 10 “catalytic” priority projects of the region.
The MCT project was conceptualized more than 15 years ago and the feasibility study of which was done by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Bernedo said he has discussed details of the MCT expansion project with JICA representatives four times since he assumed office six months ago. (MT)
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