To our surprise Mr. Del Rosario responded he had no idea what the senator was referring to. Senator Hofschneider gave Mr. Del Rosario one week to submit a report on the matter.
As of last Friday we uncovered documents on a recent issuance of a QUITCLAIM DEED for Agricultural Homestead Lot #053 T 10 containing an area of 1.5 hectares issued as a short conveyance claim.
There are problems with this issuance.
1) Conflict of interest: This Grantor is DPL’s John Del Rosario and the Grantee is DPL’s director for Tinian, Mr. Raynaldo M. Cing, the brother in-law of Mr. Del Rosario
2) The MPLA board approved the request without the presence of the board chair person plus the minutes of the meeting were not ADOPTED.
3) Short conveyance of additional 1.5 hectares was issued on March 8, 2007 now totaling 2.5 hectares. This was after the abolishment of MPLA and based on verbal approval without the adoption of the minutes of the meeting and with the chairperson absent.
4.) Who controls MPLA records? The executive branch, which abolished MPLA.
Are the minutes of the meeting not adopted still available? Who knows?
5) Back on July 28, 1998, Grantee received a Certificate of Compliance and Quitclaim Deed for the same lot #053 T 10 for 1 hectare or 10,000 square meters based on the agricultural homestead policy which ended in 1992, stating clearly that only 1 hectare shall be issued a Quitclaim Deed.
We are looking forward to the next Senate hearing scheduled for this week and we hope that Mr. Del Rosario can explain these discrepancies and internal conflict issues and why he was not aware although he was the official who signed the recent additional issuance of Quitclaim Deed.
We are currently compiling all documents uncovered to be submitted to the Senate committee chairman, Sen. Jude Hofschnieder, for review on findings. We are also looking at forming a group to specifically go after this type of issues since the AGO has not prosecuted anyone in the mismanagement of public lands.
We will bring this matter to our legislative branch including possibly hiring a lawyer to pursue this matter in court. If we do not aggressively pursue this matter then who will? We cannot remain silent on the questionable illegal dispositions of our public lands for they are diminishing at a rate unimaginable and no one is being held responsible and accountable.
GREGORIO CRUZ JR.
Taotao Tano
