(Photo grabbed from web)
CLARK FREEPORT – A Commission on Audit (COA) report said the Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) violated the law when it distributed some P7.362 million as compensation for farmers whose farms had to be given up for airport plans in lands owned by the government in the first place.
Around 66 percent or P4.892 million of the total amount was paid to just three claimants without the backing of any document, such as water or electric bills, to prove the residency or occupancy of the alleged beneficiaries, the COA noted.
In its 2018 annual report, the COA said the amount was not only “excessive,” but also violated Article 449 of Republic Act 386 or the Civil Code of the Philippines, which states that “he who builds, plants or sows in bad faith on the land of another loses what is built, planted or sown without right to indemnity.”
The agency directed CIAC to justify the expenditure.
The CIAC earlier said the P7.3 million was for financial assistance to informal settlers occupying the CIAC complex in connection with their supposed relocation for the Clark Airport Expansion Project.
The informal settlers were farming tracts of land covering 381.96 hectares out of the 2,367-hectare total land area of the Clark Civil Aviation Complex. The CIAC based the financial grant on the value of trees and crops planted as well as the structures built by the farmers.
“Assessment of the above-mentioned payments revealed that these are excessive within the purview of COA Circular 2012-003, and given that these informal settlers were illegal occupants having knowledge that the land which they encroached was government-owned,” the COA report read.
COA noted that even the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC), in a letter dated Sept. 7, 2018, had advised the CIAC not to indemnify or compensate the informal settlers for the area of land they occupied or for the value of their structures or crops since they are “possessors in bad faith” of the property.
The OGCC, however, advised CIAC to extend a modest amount of financial assistance to each informal settler family just enough “to aid them with their relocation.”
The OGCC suggested that the computation of the financial grant be based on each head of the family’s prevailing minimum daily wage for 60 days.
Based on the audit body’s records, the financial grants extended by the CIAC ranged from P30,720 to P2.064 million per claimant.
