2020 best time to work on Balamban cityhood
CEBU, Philippines — Cebu Third District Rep. Pablo John “PJ” Garcia is looking into expediting the cityhood of Balamban in 2020.
In an interview with The FREEMAN, Garcia said he is looking to see if Balamban has already met cityhood requirements.
“The committee is still gathering the requirements needed on income, the population and the area to make sure that Balamban meets the requirements under the Local Government Code,” he said.
On July 8, 2019, Garcia re-filed House Bill No. 1574 seeking to convert the municipality of Balamban into a component city of Cebu province.
Section 450 of Republic Act No. 7160 or the Local Government Code of 1991 requires that a municipality to have generated an income of at least P100,000 for the past two years for it to be eligible to become a component city.
In addition, it should have contiguous territory of at least one hundred (100) square kilometers, and a population of at least 150,000.
Once requirements are met by Balamban, Garcia said that he will look into fast-tracking its cityhood for after 2020, “there’ll be no other time” to do so.
“We have to. If we meet all the requirements, we have to fast-track it in 2020 because there’ll be no other time. 2021...ang elections will be coming in 2022. It will be difficult to sail through Congress,” he said.
Dubbed as the shipbuilding capital of the province, Balamban is a first-class municipality situated on the midwest part of Cebu.
The 2015 census pegged its population at about 87,000 people. It has 28 barangays and over 53,000 voters as of 2019. KQD (FREEMAN)
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