By Nora Soriño
Iligan City Bureau Chief
and Neil Jireh Asequia
Correspondent
ILIGAN City ― Ordered by God, a group here is set to occupy the grounds within the shuttered National Steel Corporation, this week, claiming it is their right to do so.
Led by a woman who calls herself ‘Her Majesty Queen Salvacion Legaspi y Espiritu Santo,’ claimed to listeners of her radio talk show yesterday that “it is their right to do so” because she owns the country and the rest of the world.
“It is a mission given to me by God,” she said on the air.
The woman claimed she has pertinent documents to show her ownership of the land.
“Those who would participate in the act of occupying the place will be given five kilos of rice and P100 cash each,” she said.
She has the documents to show for it, she said and those who would participate in the act of occupying said place would be given 5 kilos each along with P100.
Asked whether the people wouldn’t be harassed by the police over the said act, she replied that “there is no place for cowards who think that way. Those who are afraid of such actions (of what) the police might do, then they are not welcome to the group,” she said.
To recall, the Supreme Court in a decision made July 24, this year but made public only on October 24, ordered the city to “desist from making acts of ownership” on the said plant.
But its decision came short of saying who the “real” owner of the said plant was. The liquidator, headed by Atty. Danilo Concepcion who represents 10 banks that NSC had owed, is claiming ownership of NSC even as Global Steel, an Indian company also has claims over it.
The city’s claim is grounded on the plant’s unpaid real property taxes which it says amount to over P5 billion.
The liquidator claims over P10 billion which NSC then owed, even as Global Steel claimed that it had an agreement with the then owner that it was going to buy the said plant with payments in staggering amounts. The firm claimed it operated the said plant until it was shut down again.
The first shutdown to note was in 1999 and then a year after, Global Steel operated it until 2004.
Legaspi said that the initial action on the said plant was set originally set for Monday but postponed to December 8 because of the significance of the date, “in connection with Mama Mary.”
The city government under then City Mayor Celso G. Regencia had occupied it in 2017 and even made a flag-raising ceremony there to dramatize the said act of ownership.
Legaspi said they will also do a flag-raising ceremony there on Wednesday.
