[av_one_full first min_height=” vertical_alignment=” space=” custom_margin=” margin=’0px’ padding=’0px’ border=” border_color=” radius=’0px’ background_color=” src=” background_position=’top left’ background_repeat=’no-repeat’ animation=”]
[av_heading heading=’Vacate foreshores, Kalibonhons told ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY BOY RYAN ZABAL
[/av_heading]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=”]
KALIBO, Aklan – Thirty-one occupants were ordered to leave the foreshores of barangays Andagao and Pook.
Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (PENRO) head Ivene Reyes issued them on Oct. 24 Notices to Vacate for illegal occupation and prohibited stay in strips of land facing the Sibuyan Sea.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) gave the occupants 15 days upon receipt of the notices to remove their structures and leave.
According to the DENR, Article 51 of the Water Code of the Philippines states that “no person shall be allowed to stay in this zone longer than what is necessary for recreation, navigation, frottage, fishing or salvage, or to build structures of any kind.”
Other legal bases the Environment department cited in issuing the notice were the Public Land Act, which governs the disposition of lands of the public domain, and Paragraph 4 of the Lands Administrative Order No. 8-3 series of 1936, as amended.
Under the Philippine Fisheries Code of 1998, a foreshore is a “string of land margining a body of water; the part of a seashore between the low water line, usually as the seaward margin of a low tide terrace and the upper limit of wave wash at high tide usually marked by a beach scarp or berm.”
Several structures made of concrete and light materials were built at the foreshores, which were declared “no build zones” by the Joint Memorandum Circular No. 2014-1 issued April 4, 2014.
These agencies came up with the memo: DENR, Department of the Interior and Local Government, Department of National Defense, Department of Public Works and Highways, and Department of Science and Technology.
The Pook barangay council has expressed alarm over the sprouting of structures and the opening up of small-time resorts around 100 meters away from the provincial government’s seaport project.
Thousands of talisay and malabago seedlings planted at the foreshores in line with the National Greening Program, a reforestation initiative of the national government that started in 2011, were allegedly uprooted, too. (Aklan Forum Journal/PN)
[/av_textblock]
[/av_one_full]
