(Full disclosure: This writer is a victim-claimant for compensation for the damage to his residence and other structures during the 2017 Marawi Siege. This, however, does not make me deviate from the journalistic code of fair reporting, objectivity, and integrity. We write on behalf of the estimated 14,000 victims who have been seeking justice for nearly seven years now).

Last week, I was invited to a forum at the newly constructed Convention Center at the so-called ground zero in Marawi City. The number of attendees exceeded my expectations. Prominent families who were victims of the 2017 Marawi Siege, including leaders of civil society groups, ulama groups, and sultanates, were in attendance. The gathering turned out to be an indignation gathering against the Marawi Compensation Board's move to undervalue the actual cost of their properties lost or damaged during the war.

In addition to the tidbits, if not deficit, of information the victims were getting from the MCB on the progress of their compensation claims, they were gravely worried about the new scheme adopted by the Board in computing the damage to their structures, which will substantially reduce their compensation amounts under the Marawi Victims Compensation Law.

They came across a letter from the Board addressed to the Commission on Audit seeking a legal opinion on whether, in computing the amount to be paid, it could employ a system of valuation that would devalue the damaged properties. It wanted to apply the so-called “depreciated replacement cost” invoking a certain COA circular in paying the “totally or repair cost of partially damaged structures of residential, cultural, commercial properties...” Moreover, in assessing the values, the MCB has adopted the property valuation system of the Provincial (Lanao del Sur) Assessor’s Office. This will diminish markedly the compensation amounts for the victims.

What’s wrong with that?

Firstly, the MCB has been granted powers spelled out by the black letter of the Compensation Law and the Implementing Rules and Regulations that they crafted, adopted, and agreed upon with the victims in a public hearing. Prudence dictates that it should not veer away from what had been agreed upon, yet now they adopted another system of computation that is not found in the text of the law and the IRR. Overstepping or overstretching its powers is tantamount to a willful abuse of authority, amounting to a lack of power.

Under the IRR, there are only two ways to compute the compensation due to the victim-claimants: the fair market value and the “value of the total area per story.” Nothing more, nothing less. A system called “depreciated replacement cost” is not found in the law and the IRR. Why is this so? It is because such a scheme is applicable only for taxation purposes, so the taxpayer would pay reduced real estate taxes.

Moreover, as pointed out by COA in  Circular No. 2020-006, depreciated replacement cost was “issued to address the enormous accounts of discrepancies in Property, Plant and Equipment (PPE) account balances of government agencies that caused the non-establishment of the accuracy of the PPE balances presented in their financial statement; and not as standard costing in awarding monetary compensation for damaged structures owned by private claimants (underscoring mine).”

When the Board decided to adopt the new system, there was no consultation whatsoever with the victim-claimants, nor was there prior notice about it. Its adoption was arbitrary, a grave abuse of power, and without a legal leg to stand on.

Secondly, the Board used the assessed values of properties from the Assessor’s Office of Lanao del Sur as a guide for valuation, not of Marawi City. This is highly anomalous. The assessed values of buildings in the various municipalities cannot be compared with those in the capital, Marawi City. It’s apples and oranges. The value of buildings in a remote town is a hundred times less than that of buildings in the city. Is this not too obvious and elementary to have been overlooked by the Board?

(To be continued)

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amb_mac_lanto@yahoo.com