Lawyer and Urban Planning Committee (CPU) member, Álvaro Rodrigues, has expressed disagreement with the procedures of the government regarding the expropriation of a land parcel that the government wants to use as public green space and leisure area.
The topic was sparked last week at a meeting of the CPU during the discussion of the Urban Conditions Plant (PCU) of a land parcel located at the back of Camões Garden in an area known as Escada do Caracol.
In response to the information that the land parcel’s PCU would be issued with the classification that it would be used as public space, Rodrigues asked, “This is a private land [parcel]; how can we say it will be used for public space?”
In response, an official from the Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau (DSSOPT) said that it was intended for such land parcels to enter the public domain first and then be used as public space.
Rodrigues disagreed with the procedure and claimed that if there is an intention from the government to expropriate the parcel, the authorities should communicate that fact to the landowners and negotiate with them the payment of proper compensation for the expropriation, and that only once that has taken place should a PCU be issued with the conditions of the parcel being used for public space.
“I can tell you that this land parcel is private and that, according to the land register, it was [most recently] acquired by a company in 2013 that paid some 21 million patacas for it,” he said, adding, “I don’t think there is any legal issue in the government wanting to expropriate the parcel, but I do think there is a problem with this procedure. We are approving a PCU that implicates the change of the land without hearing from the owner or informing him in advance about the government’s intention? This does not sound right to me. This PCU is [under] discussion here [at the CPU meeting] because the owner requested the PCU so he could know what he could use the parcel for, but now we are issuing one [PCU] that will be completely useless for him,” he remarked.
