MANILA – The Senate approved on third and final reading a bill dividing the island of Palawan into three provinces – Palawan del Norte, Palawan del Sur and Palawan Oriental.
Senators voted on the measure 14-1-0 on Monday night.
The three proposed provinces will be created via a plebiscite in 2020, said Sen. Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara, bill sponsor.
“Due to the vastness of Palawan, an archipelago of 1,800 islands with a population of at least 1.1 million, the division of the existing province under the bill will comply with requirements for a province set forth by the Local Government Code,” said the chairman of the committee on local government.
“The divided provinces will meet the land area requirement, and that Palawan del Norte and Palawan Oriental are expected to satisfy the population requirement imposed by law by 2020,” he added.
Under the Senate bill – which was created based on House Bill 8055 – the province of Palawan del Norte will comprise the municipalities of Coron, Culion, Busuanga, Linacapan, Taytay, and El Nido.
Palawan Oriental, on the other hand, will comprise Roxas, Araceli, Dumaran, Cuyo, Agutaya, Magsaysay, Cayancillo, and San Vicente town.
Moreover Palawan del Sur – the “mother province” – will be composed of the municipalities of Aborlan, Narra, Quezon, Rizal, Espanola, Brooke’s Point, Bataraza, Balacbac, and Kalayaan.
“If we speak of economic potential, Palawan is a powerhouse. Its local growth rate has been clocked at bristling 7 percent per annum for many years now. And this was achieved with a total ban on the exploitation of natural resources over a wide swath of its land,” Angara said./PN
