The architect Alberto Gutiérrez Pineda is the coordinator of the citizen oversight of the contract between the Mayor of Valledupar and the University of Magdalena, whose objective is to carry out the partial revision and exceptional modification of the Municipal Land Management Plan (POT).
The Andean Area University Foundation, the Valledupar Chamber of Commerce, the Society of Engineers and the Society of Architects in Cesar, the department’s Environmental Forum, among other actors, are part of this watchdog group.
EL PILÓN spoke with Gutiérrez, a specialist in civil works administration, about the review that the aforementioned educational institution is making to the municipality’s POT, a process that should end on March 31, in accordance with the contract term.
What is it and what are the components of a Land Management Plan?
The POT is a municipal public policy document. Some of the components are the technical support document, a general, urban and rural document, as well as for programs and projects, a management and financing instrument, the execution program and cartography. There must also be the draft agreement of the Municipal Council, a technical and didactic summary of the problems encountered and the proposed solutions, all based on a diagnosis.
Law 388 of 1997 says that the ordering is done following three basic principles: prevalence of the general interest over the individual, that means that no specific group can be privileged, first the public over private interests.
Second, it is the social and ecological function of the property, that is, none of the land that is within the POT is exempt from fulfilling these functions. The third is the equitable distribution of burdens and benefits, this refers to the fact that the State does not give away interventions, but rather distributes what is public patrimony. Any intervention that could end in enrichment in favor of third parties must be eliminated in the Plan, which is why the figure of surplus value and appreciation arises.
But these management plans are not only at the municipal level, how is the organization of the Cesarean territory and the rest of the nation articulated?
Valledupar has the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Park that is administered by National Parks and the forest reserve of the Second Law of 1959 that is in charge of the Ministry of the Environment. We also have indigenous reservations that are directly related to the Ministry of the Interior, the Ruta del Sol is also a clear example because the nation intervenes in the territory.
The Organic Law of Ordinance, since 2011, gave the power to the departments to formulate their own ordinance plans and that they must concentrate the actions that are supramunicipal. This was ratified in Law 2200 of 2022, which emphasizes that the long-term vision of the department must be focused on a land use model where impact policies, plans, programs and projects are exposed.
The department has not been doing its homework, since it does not have a management plan, what are the strategic programs and projects agreed with the community, what the Government has been doing is conducting a line of investments in its own opinion, in its opinion .
That is, should development plans be based on management plans?
Although the management plans select the projects that must be carried out year after year, administration by administration, the plans do not have resources, the resources are in the development plans that the POT execution program must obtain.
But in Valledupar we have dedicated ourselves to making loose investments, without any type of support, they do not correspond to what was agreed for 12 years.
Let’s talk about the partial review that Unimagdalena is doing to the Valledupar POT, why is it necessary to inspect before expiration?
Law 388 empowers mayors to initiate the review process due to short, medium, and long-term expiration. At the beginning of the government, the president makes a review of what tasks the previous one carried out, otherwise it is up to him to add it to the tasks that he has to carry out in his mandate.
In other words, this exceptional revision and modification contracted in 2022 should have been carried out in the first year of Mello Castro’s term, between 2020 and 2021?
Al Mello had to do the review in year one so that the Ordinance Plan and the Development Plan were coordinated with the programs and projects that the POT indicated for its moment.
By doing so in year three and four they are justifying that it is an exceptional modification, but Decree 1077 of 2015 says that the exceptional modification is made when there is a declaration of disaster or public calamity or the results of detailed technical studies on threat, vulnerability and risks, but those are not the cases.
The administration maintains that it is due to the approval of the Plan for the Ordering and Management of Hydrographic Basins (POMCA) of the Guatapurí River, but that does not have a level of detail, only a general one.
How have you analyzed the Valledupar POT review process?
From July 29 to December 31, that is, for five months, the University was contracted to carry out the studies, the review, formulation and presentation of the documents, but time did not give them.
Of the $3.5 billion worth of the contract, an advance payment of $1.5 billion has already been made. Of the 15 expected products, none have been approved by the municipal administration according to the response it has given us in the petition rights.
The University requested a three-month extension and we are less than a month away from the end of the term and they have not finished the diagnostic stage, then follows the formulation that is to concentrate the solutions to the problems found so that the POT that is in force until the year 2027, be reinforced.
The current POT has a major shortcoming and that is that it does not have an execution program and the curious thing is that Mayor Mello Castro was part of the group of councilors that approved the POT. So now they left the task to the University of Magdalena to correct the error, that execution program in the last year of the government would leave the task to the next mayor to implement it.
Last week two citizen participation tables were canceled because they are still adjusting the products. How have you seen the supervision of the contract by the Mayor’s Office?
What we have found is that the technical and professional capacity of the municipal administration is reduced in these POT issues. There are old people who can understand the logic of the Ordinance Plan, but not with the ability to read and interpret for the products that the university has been delivering.
The main shortcoming that we found as oversight is that an audit was not hired. The University delivers some products and charges some resources. In fact, they charge $270 million for administration. So the Mayor went to the Ministry of Housing to help review the products, but that is not contemplated in the contract, it is a concept that the entity can give in good faith.
What have been the main modifications or proposals that the citizens have noticed at the participation tables?
The few people who attend the communes and corregimientos come with various ideas about the scope of these meetings, I attribute it to the fact that there is a weakness in the communication strategy implemented by the University.
This is not an informal product, the University is charging the municipality more than $107 million for a communication and citizen participation strategy. One goes out and asks people if they are aware of the POT review and very few talk about it.
I don’t think it’s a lack of interest. It must also be clear that this is a review for the POT to fulfill its tasks until 2027, there are those who believe that it could change the total orientation of the municipality.
In your opinion, in 2027, who should start the construction of the new POT, the outgoing or incoming mayor?
It may be that the mayor that we are going to elect in October comes up with the idea of leaving the POT formulated to the next mayor, that would be ideal, otherwise that should be one of the immediate tasks of the new president.
By Andrea Guerra Peña / THE PYLON.
@andreaguerraperiodista