[ad_1]
Informed readers are aware of the shameful case of the four real estate projects located in rural territories, defined as Ecological Protection Areas (APE) in the regulatory instrument called the Santiago Metropolitan Regulatory Plan (PRMS), in the communes of Colina and Lo Barnechea.
Its savvy investors, with the guiding hands of efficient lobbyists, have managed to ensure that none of the public bodies related to the matter, demand compliance with regulatory frameworks. Some complainants argue that this is due to laziness and others more insightful argue that this is caused by their real estate biases.
The managers of these projects and their commercial advisers, with elegant interpretative gaps, convinced the Regional Ministerial Secretary (Seremi) of the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism (Minvu), the Environmental Assessment Service (SEA) and the Superintendency of the Environment (SMA ) that these lucrative projects had to be “authorized” and that they did not require entering the Environmental Impact Assessment System (SEIA). Their main fallacious argument was that the projects do not include the construction of houses and that they are not subdivisions either, since it would only be about the sale of land, previously subdivided, where future owners must obtain authorizations from the institutions to build their homes.
The Supreme Court and the Third Environmental Court, based in Valdivia, have already established that this way of presenting projects is a mere ruse to develop housing projects in rural areas without complying with the law. In our country there are tens of thousands of “pleasant” parcels in rural lands, surreptitiously accepted by DL 3,516 of the year 1980, whose provisions are breached in view and patience of the political caste, which has never had the will to end the fraud that has generated millions of private capital gains outside of urban planning. In such a vast sense that article 55 of the General Law of Urbanism and Construction (LGUC) is reviewed to perceive that such tolerated practice is illegal.
But in the eastern sector of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, the sectoral authorities are afraid to pronounce themselves, rejecting as appropriate, those subdivisions in such rural territories also protected in the PRMS, justifying their complicit silences by saying without shame that they are waiting for what the Comptroller General of the Republic decides in relation to citizen complaints for these 4 projects. We call this administrative parsimony a lack of service.
A few dozen kilometers to the west, the Pudahuel Municipal Works Directorate (DOM) and again the Seremi Minvu are applying the same delaying mechanism. The irregularities committed by that DOM are rude and the seremi does not want to admit them, even if they are under her own nose. Both institutions, the municipal and the central government, in order not to get to the bottom of the matter, declare that it is necessary to wait for the Comptroller’s Office to pronounce itself despite the fact that they have known them for more than a year. This function of the Minvu systematically refuses to apply Article 4 of the LGUC, which gives it broad powers to “get the pot wet”, but there is no case, meanwhile, with this unjustified delay, the private party is the only winner.
The irregularities in Pudahuel would imply alleged crimes committed by real estate companies, which are sanctioned by article 138 of the LGUC and in view of this embarrassing situation and many other irregularities, article 22 of that same law indicates the responsibilities of public officials that delivered the corresponding approvals. Faced with these tricks, the everlasting mayor Carrasco and the Seremi Minvu Errázuriz, had long ago denounced the matter to the Public Ministry and not sit around waiting with Muslim patience for the Comptroller’s Office to issue judgments, as they have thus allowed more illegalities, affecting third parties.
The regulation nowhere conditions the exercise of the functions of the municipalities, Seremi Minvu, SMA and SEA and other public institutions to the Comptroller’s Office to rule previously on the same matter, less when there are families that have been and will be affected by the purchase irregular homes, on land where they will not be able to build homes, or in the face of the destruction of areas under official protection. Or is it that urban and environmental regulations are so complex that only the Comptroller’s Office knows how to interpret them in accordance with the law?
Not so dear readers, when the decisions of the authorities affect certain interests of investors apituted with political power, some of them prefer that others speak first: Could it be that they will be making merits to get hits in the eventuality that the next government is it from the other political sector?
Even TVN, a channel for all Chileans (sic), fell into the networks of those who, with the prompt assistance of the General Water Directorate (DGA), destroyed the Los Trapenses wetland in the Lo Barnechea commune, by censoring an interview made on Saturday last week to Mayor Cristóbal Lira, to the punctual neighbors Loreto Márquez and Angélica Mozó, who have made multiple efforts to denounce the business, and to this columnist, because our answers to the journalist’s questions could harm the interests of those private who, to do lucrative business, filled the wetland with rubble.
As we can see, in the eastern and western sectors of Santiago there are influential real estate managers who until now have managed to prevent the State Administration from interfering in their illegal businesses, with the sole exception of the Comptroller, whose role is to demand compliance with the law from all equally and therefore there are subjects and even institutions that criticize it. Without the active presence of the Comptroller’s Office, the corruption that is known would multiply by a thousand and in this regard we remember the witty Nicanor Parra when he affirmed that even the Law of the Jungle is not respected in Chile.
When later the Comptroller’s Office pronounces itself, rejecting bad practices and ordering adherence to the law, business unions and even the weak College of Architects of Chile, now commanded by 4 patronized directors, since 7 of them were in the The need to resign from the Board of Directors due to substantive divergences with the minority, with lofty expressions they will state that the Comptroller’s Office “is acting outside of its powers,” the same as the Carabineros generals who did not do their jobs well, due to the social outbreak of October 2019, monserga that repeats up to the High Command of that public security institution.
In short, the fault that the projects cannot be developed on time lies with the real estate developers and their highly paid advisers, who, in order to obtain advantages, have not respected the laws that everyone must comply with. It’s that simple and finally, we recommend that the ingenious GPS Office of the Ministry of Economy instruct the investors it protects in order to be serious in the processing of their investment projects.
Patrick herman
Defend the City Foundation
[ad_2]
