Pasig court okays Harbour Centre reclamation project voided by CIAC

Wenceslao to CA: That’s our project; case was hidden from us; our award hidden from Pasig Court

DM Wenceslao and Associates, through its subsidiary Mandaue Land Consortium, has asked the Court of Appeals to void a Pasig court decision ordering the implementation of a reclamation project in Mandaue City voided years earlier by a government agency.

The court decision favors the consortium led by Harbour Centre whose project was voided by the Construction Industry Arbitration Commission (CIAC) since it was already granted more than a decade earlier to the Wenceslao group.

Wenceslao said it was not informed about the case while the court was not informed about the Wenceslao project although the city government, under a new mayor, was impleaded.

The Pasig court issued its decision in December 2020. Wenceslao learned about it in November 2021.

The Mandaue City government, then under then Mayor Thadeo Ouano , awarded the project to Wenceslao in 2001 after a public bidding.

In May 2010, Jonas Cortes became the city mayor and refused to honor the award to the Wenceslao group, claiming there was no consultation with the Philippine Reclamation Authority and approval of the president.

He then negotiated and signed a new reclamation contract in 2014 with the Harbour Centre group.

The Wenceslao group filed an arbitration case with the CIAC to declare the validity of its contract and to compel the city to implement its project, and won. CIAC issued a writ of execution in 2018.

But in June 2020, a sub-contractor of the Harbour Centre group asked the Pasig court for the enforcement of its contract under the voided project.

The Mandaue City government, in its filings, never mentioned the prior Wenceslao project and the CIAC decision, keeping the court in the dark and preventing the Wenceslao group from intervening.

The project could not proceed until the national government had cleared the areas of illegal claimants, a process that is still under way.

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The article was originally published in ABS-CBN and written by Katrina Domingo.