TO remove opportunities for corruption and correct outdated provisions, Vice Mayor Sara Duterte- Carpio considers amending Davao City’s zoning ordinance a top priority in the remaining months of the current Davao City Council, if not the next city administration.
“I’ve been always supportive of the move to amend the Davao City zoning ordinance to accommodate changes because it is already outdated.”
Inday Sara, acting city mayor when interviewed last week, calls the city ordinance “chopsuey” because it has not been followed religiously.
“The way I look at it, nahimo nang chopsuey ang atong urbanization– naay agri nga nagtupad og residential, poultry nagtupad sa balay sa tawo, naay agri nga naging industrial, so nawala na tong essence sa zoning,” Inday Sara said.
Inday Sara said ordinance defines the various areas of the city according to purpose such as agricultural, industrial, residential and other categories, but such zonification plan should be pursued by the city government and prohibit changes for a longer period of time, instead of allowing the city council to reclassify areas as often as possible.
She said allowing the city council to reclassify the established zones not only defeats the essence of zonification, it has also created opportunity for corruption and controversy like the current boiling bribery scandal in the city legislature.
Certain councilors have denied having been involved in extortion but a number admitted to have been given financial gifts from a certain subdivision developers as a token of gratitude for the council’s approval of their request for zoning reclassification.
She said changing some of the provisions of the city zoning ordinance ought to be given priority even by the next city government, if the current city government fails to finish the job.
The vice mayor said that lack of technical expertise among city councilors is one of the reasons why it took a long time for the body to finalize the amendments.
Davao City’s revised zoning ordinance, passed in 1996, was only approved for implementation by the Housing Land Use Regulatory Board in mid-2001 amid criticism that the document had already become outdated at the time of approval by HLURB. The zoning code regulates the use of the city’s land resources in the implementation of the Comprehensive Development Plan of Davao City. It is supposed to be updated every five years.
Embodied in the ordinance is a provision that allows the housing committee to approve application by housing developers for locational clearance, site development proposals, and exemptions from the zoning ordinance. This power spawns allegations of corruption, bribery and extortion.
The Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (DCCCII) earlier passed a resolution urging the city government to harmonize the various industries and sectors in the re-assessment of the zoning plan.
Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte, in response, assured the business sector that the review and updating of the plan “will engage various sectors to draw and illicit their valuable inputs including their specific sectoral interests and concerns.”
The Office of the City Planning and Development Coordinator, which serves as the technical secretariat, reported that it has completed the gathering of primary and secondary data necessary for updating of the development plan and the amendment of zoning ordinance.
“The data and information obtained from authoritative sources such as researches and technical studies will be presented to various sectors,” said Inday Sara, who represented Mayor Duterte in the DCCCII annual business convention last year.
“Together with the inputs from various sectors, the scientific data shall be used as basis in delineating boundaries, in classifying areas for specific land uses and in harmonizing the various industries,” she added.
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