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By Sammy Martin, Correspondent
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. on
Monday asked public officials, particularly heads of field offices
of frontline government agencies, to delegate authority to sign
documents to any of their deputies if they would go on leave during
the Christmas season.
His reaction is based on complaints of some
people, including Balikbayans from the United States, that the Land
Registration Administration (LRA) office was unable to act on their
request for registration of their properties when they went to that
office last week due to the absence of the register of deeds.
“Public functionaries should not neglect their
primary duty of rendering services to the people who, in the first
place, are the ones paying for their salaries and allowances. Let us
not give them a reason to feel frustrated or to think that the
government is insensitive to their needs,” he said.
Pimentel said the register of deeds did not
bother to delegate his authority to sign certificates of land titles
and other pertinent documents to anyone, causing a disruption of the
normal operations of the office to the detriment of the transacting
public.
It is a pity that Balikbayan Filipinos came back
to their homeland just to have their properties properly registered,
and would return to the US and other countries without accomplishing
their main objective, said Pimentel.
Pimentel batted anew for the implementation of a
cadastral survey of all lands in the country to protect land
ownership of the people, on account of proliferation of fake land
titles. The proposal is embodied in a bill filed by the senator with
the Senate a long time ago.
“The intention of the bill is to place all
lands in the country under a cadastral survey because, by doing so,
we make sure that even the poorest of the poor occupying a certain
land and claiming the land to be their own would be somehow entitled
to have title over that land and therefore, the owner can capitalize
on that title,” Pimentel explained.
The minority leader urged the LRA to intensify
the campaign against the syndicates of land title forgers, and see
to it that the culprits, once caught, are prosecuted and convicted
by the courts for their offenses.
“Without any title to the land, many of our
people will remain poor because they have no way to raise capital
for their needs,” he pointed out.
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