By Mae Singuay

The Bacolod City Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) has scheduled a public hearing next week for the Bacolod Real Estate Development Corporation’s (Bredco) request to reclaim an additional 25 hectares of the Reclamation Area.

The specific date for the hearing is yet to be released.

Councilor Al Victor Espino, chairperson of the committee on laws, ordinances and good government, cited that Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez endorsed Bredco’s intention to the SP.

The committee will have to hold a hearing to find out the exact location of the reclamation.

In his letter, Benitez said Bredco intends to reclaim additional areas for development under the replanning and re-engineering of its port operations.

The conceptual site development plan for the expansion was also attached in the letter.

“With this proposal, the undersigned is expecting that this will entail the amendment of the Comprehensive Revised Reclamation Agreement entered by the city and Bredco last March 16, 1995, and the subsequent Tripartite Memorandum of Agreement between the city, Bredco and the Philippine Reclamation Authority entered into last March 18, 2000,” Benitez said in his letter.

He said the City Legal Office is now studying the said proposal so it can render a legal opinion on the matter.

“We are furnishing the city council ahead of the said proposal so that it could also take its appropriate action with regards to the said request of Bredco,” he added.

In Bredco’s letter to Benitez on July 27, it stated, “The sustained and gradual recovery of the country’s economy post-Covid revival prompted Bredco to re-engineer its current port facilities and/or operations at the Bredco Port.”

The move would require additional reclamation within the port facility covering, more or less, 25 hectares, the letter added./MS, WDJ