As he bid farewell to the City in 2010, the country’s Most Outstanding City Mayor Pons Casurra now have a monumental legacy for the Surigaonons, as President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo finally signed the Special Patent No. 3745 declaring the One Million Sixty Four Thousand Seven Hundred Sixty (1,064,760) Square Meters or more or less 106 hectares area in Nonoc Island be donated in favor to the City Government. The said area covers the entire location of the Special Economic Zone where all Philnico facilities are situated. The Special Patent will now give the City Government its absolute ownership and rights of the area which would provide full authority to transact and negotiate whoever interested investors who wanted to re-operate the mothballed Nickel Refinery in Nonoc Island.
City Mayor Alfonso Casurra in an exclusive interview with Island Post, this is one of the most significant success stories rendered by his administration since he assumed office as city’s chief executive.
“We are doing this effort since 2006 and now, it was finally granted in our favor… I am so proud and happy to tell the Surigaonons of this development” he said.
In 1999 during the incumbency of deposed President Joseph Estrada, a Presidential Proclamation No. 172 and 192 has been signed and issued by the latter, declaring the same area be conveyed to the City of Surigao but still needs a Special Patent for its absolute ownership.
The Land Management Bureau under the office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) had thoroughly reviewed and approved all the technical descriptions and come up with a recommendation to Environment Secretary Lito Atienza. The DENR favorably indorsed the same to the office of the President and Pres. Arroyo herself finally signed the Special Patent just recently.
Casurra further revealed that the only regrettable part in that considered blue-chip investment in Nonoc Island is that, despite the efforts taken by the city government and its officials to attract foreign investors, they don’t have the luxury time to materialize the re-opening of the mothballed nickel refinery because of the various obstacles and stumbling blocks encountered during the negotiation period.
But still the city was able to collect taxes out from the extraction of ores in the Nonoc area which will be transported to foreign lands.
He, however, expresses high hopes that the next national and city administrations will be able to push through another leap of development in that said area in Nonoc Island to somehow bring back the life of the nickel plant to provide a brighter economic future for the Surigaonons, Casurra said.
In related development, various supporters claimed that Special Patent 3745 be tagged as a “CASURRA LEGACY”, the mayor simply replied “WELL HISTORY WILL JUDGE ME ON THAT”… (Natz Corbeta)
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