Department of Public Lands Secretary Oscar M. Babauta said yesterday that a total of 155 homestead lots in Kagman have been retrieved by the agency from its \u201coriginal permittees.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThese had been retrieved by the department and put them in the pool to be formally reissued out to the next qualified applicants,\u201d Babauta said at the Rotary Club of Saipan meeting held at the Hyatt Regency Saipan.<\/p>\n
According to Babauta, the reasons for the retrieval of the 155 homestead lots vary. <\/p>\n
\u201cSome of them opted to just pack up and leave the island for economic reasons: to seek greener pasture, to better their family lives abroad,\u201d he said, adding that some of them were also non-compliant to the permit conditions.<\/p>\n
These homestead lots, Babauta said, will soon be awarded to 155 of the over 3,500 applicants in the waiting list, with only 75 percent of them considered qualified. <\/p>\n
The secretary noted that they are working on applications they received in 1992 and 1993. \u201cThat\u2019s how far back we are,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
Once the agency has conducted \u201can official declaration\u201d of the homestead lots by the end of the year, Babauta said they will be servicing the next 155 applicants in the waiting list. <\/p>\n
[B]Moratorium[\/B]<\/p>\n
Babauta said DPL has stopped accepting homestead applications in April 2006 because of the moratorium on land compensation payments and village homestead programs declared by Gov. Benigno R. Fitial. <\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the scarcity of suitable homesteading sites, it is with that reason that the administration and Public Lands agreed in principle to suspend this program for the time being,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While Babauta said that there is still a possibility that the moratorium will be lifted, he disclosed that they\u2019re looking at working with private developers similar to Sandy Beach Homes LLC and Blue Water Homes LLC to allow homestead applicants to avail of what these projects have to offer.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething like this in the future is very foreseeable,\u201d he told reporters after the meeting.<\/p>\n
[B]Tinian and Rota [\/B]<\/p>\n
Babauta noted, however, that the moratorium is only applicable to Saipan. <\/p>\n
The secretary disclosed that they\u2019re going to open up 247 homestead lots at the West San Jose Homestead Subdivision on Tinian and 126 lots at Sabana on Rota. <\/p>\n
According to Babauta, the Tinian lots will be available once the environmental assessment is completed and basic homestead infrastructure such as power, water, and roads are in place. <\/p>\n
For the Rota lots, Babauta said the project contractor just finished the overall A&E design, biological and ecological surveys, and environmental assessment. <\/p>\n
Babauta added that some $5 million each for Tinian and Rota are still needed to solicit and approve proposals for the homestead subdivision lots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Department of Public Lands Secretary Oscar M. Babauta said yesterday that a total of 155 homestead lots in Kagman have been retrieved by the agency from its \u201coriginal permittees.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}