Baguio gov’t presses probe on Forbes Park land titles

By Antonio Alvarez Sagud Jr. and Lloyd Adrian C. Villegas

BAGUIO CITY -- The city government is pushing annulment of the Certificates of Ancestral Land Titles issued by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples to heirs of Lauro Carantes over portions of the Forbes Park Forest reservation and investigation on the matter.

Mayor Reinaldo Bautista Jr. has taked city legal officer Melchor Rabanes to work on the city’s steps for the reversal of the CALTs issued to the Carantes family.

The city council came up with a committee headed by Councilor Isabelo Cosalan Jr. to investigate the issuance of the NCIP over some portions of the Forbes Park Parcels I and II last Nov. 18, 2008 which covers more than 100,000 square meters of land registered with the registered of deeds in the name of the heirs of Lauro Carantes.

The committee agreed to request the Office of the Solicitor General to file cases for the recovery of portions of the Forbes Park as part of the forest reservation.

The city government also irged President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo through the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to turn over and proclaim in favor of the City of Baguio the remaining portions of Forbes Park Reservation for watershed or forest purposes barred from future conversion and reclassification.

The city government also requested Congress to conduct a congressional Inquiry on why the NCIP and the Land Registration Commission are giving due course to the applications for titling as ancestral lands over the government reservations like the Forbes Park reservations.

Bautista said the City government will be firm in the position to request concerned offices to ask for the annulment, reversal or cancellation of Carantes’ ancestral land titles. –