Home 
THE COURT has ordered the Cebu provincial government to cease from demolishing a cooperative-owned building built on a province-owned lot for 20 days starting last Monday.
Regional Trial Court Judge Sylvestre Maamo Jr. of Branch 17 also told the Capitol not to stop the Langub Kalunasan Multipurpose Cooperative from operating a deep well at the lot, located in barangay Kalunasan, Cebu City.
?After due consideration of the facts and the arguments presented by both parties, this court believes that there is extreme necessity to prevent irreparable injury to plaintiff. Furthermore, it is necessary to maintain the status quo ante while the matter on the applications for preliminary injunction are still to be heard,? said Maamo his temporary restraining order dated June 29.
The Langub Kalunasan Multipurpose Cooperative, represented by chairman Antonio Canoy, earlier asked the court to intervene in Capitol?s demolition attempt on their building through the issuance of a temporary restraining order.
The Capitol and the cooperative first clashed over the lot in 2003, when the cooperative dug a deep well on the lot just as the province, under then Gov. Pablo Garcia, passed a resolution intending to sell the property.
After Garcia?s daughter, Gwendolyn, took over Capitol in 2004, Canoy asked the Capitol through a letter dated Sept. 27, 2005 if the cooperative could buy the land or pay a judicial deposit for its use.
Canoy, in his complaint, admitted that while the letter was unanswered, the cooperative started building a two-story building on the lot that would serve as the cooperative?s offices.
Last June 17, the Office of the Governor sent the cooperative a letter ordering its members to demolish the building, citing that the construction on the province-owned lot was never permitted by the Capitol.
On June 26, the Capitol attempted to demolish the nearly-complete cooperative building, but called off the operation on account of rain. The operation prompted the cooperative to seek the court?s intervention.
Maamo has scheduled a hearing on the cooperative?s complaint on July 10.
The lot is among those covered by Provincial Ordinance 93-1, which gives informal residents living on province-owned lots a chance to buy out the property they occupied. But with the deadline of the ordinance having lapsed, Governor Garcia has been aggressively trying to recover province-owned lots that have not been paid for.
