Reclaimed areas may be used to pay land debts

Raimundo do Rosário speaks during the meeting

The new reclaimed areas being built and planned in Macau may be used to pay a land debt of almost 89,000 square meters overdue for many years, the president of the Legislative Assembly (AL)’s Follow-up Committee on Land and Public Concession Affairs, Ho Ion Sang said. The comment was made during a press conference that followed yesterday’s committee meeting held to discuss of the ongoing issue of the idle land plots.
It was the first time that such a possibility is being considered as on several other occasions the Chief Executive (CE) has rejected the idea in the name of the “public interest.”
According to the statement of the president of the committee, the CE “hasn’t decided yet on this matter.” The Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário admitted during the meeting that the plan could be viable, although it should be used only as a last resort and always “respecting the conditions imposed by the Central Government [on the authorization for landfill construction].”
Ho confirmed that the agenda of the meeting was set on the six cases currently on hand and involving instances of land swaps. Two of them are related to land concessions concerning the expansion of the gaming industry. Another two are related to the construction of public housing and the final ones with the construction of other public facilities.
The focus of the discussion was on four key land areas: developments of Wynn and MGM in the NAPE area; Galaxy’s Cotai resort; the land used to build the Ilha Verde Public Housing plots 1, 2 and 3; and the former Coloane quarry plots where the government recently finalized the Seac Pai Van public housing complex. The government issued on several occasions compensation commitments for other land plots withdrawn in similar conditions to the ones ceded.
The land plots attributed to the concessionaires in the cases of the Wynn and MGM swaps are those on plots C and D of Nam Van Lake and those related to the exchange over the Seac Pai Van public housing are located at the Estrada do Altinho de Ká Hó, which were embroiled in recent turmoil over the concession term expiration.
More complex seems to be the other cases related to the area where Lotus Square was constructed, as well as the expansion of the Solid Waste Incineration Plant in Taipa, for which there hasn’t been any commitment of government compensation.
According to Ho, there are only two possibilities under discussion; the first is to “pay back” the same land in question to the concessionaires. According to the analysis of the Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário, this might be a slow to situation to resolve since “from the about 40 notifications for the land concession expiration, only two intentions of reclaiming the plots were in fact submitted to the government, since all the others involve court processes that have stalled.” This difficulty opens the window for the second option already mentioned.
Questioned on the sidelines prior to the meeting of the AL, Secretary Raimundo do Rosário, preferred not to address this possibility saying simply that “land can only be paid with other land.” He therefore reaffirmed the government’s intention of compensating the “land in debt” with the now idle lands soon to be reclaimed by the government “as soon as – and if – the courts decide in our favor.”

Wa Keong building OK’d to be partially reinhabited

The Wa Keong building, located at 3 Rua da Entena, and recently damaged in an accident involving a tourism bus, now meets the conditions for it to be partially reinhabited, the Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário said yesterday on the sidelines of the AL committee meeting.
According to Rosário, the evaluation of the building’s structure confirmed that it did not suffer major structural damage and so “[the people living in] 16 of the 21 units were authorized to return to their homes and to their daily life,” adding “the same is the case for five out of the six shops.”
“Only the shop that was directly affected by the accident and the five housing units that are in that same vertical line have not yet been authorized [as safe for the residents and owners] to return to […] but they can go there anytime they need,” he said.
Rosário also said that the complete return of the inhabitants to the units will be possible “only after the repair works [are finished].”
Although stating, “this question has not yet been put [forward],” the Secretary advanced that “certainly we [the government] are available to help [with the repair works] and to solve the problem as fast as possible.”
Yesterday evening the Government’s Spokesperson Office also issued a statement reading: “After the general analysis of the several factors, the Inspection Commission considers that with the exception to a shop and five residential units, all other units [meet] conditions of livability.” RM