(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte has named Eduardo del Rosario, former chairperson of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), as the new head of the newly created Department of Human Settlement and Urban Development (DHSUD).
The President also appointed Joel Joseph Marciano Jr. as director-general of another recently created agency, the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA).
The names of the two new officials were contained in the list of presidential appointees released by the Palace on Tuesday, Jan. 7.
Del Rosario is the ad interim secretary of DHSUD which is a state department created on February 14, 2019 by virtue of Republic Act 11201. The department is created with the consolidation of the HUDCC and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board.
The President signed Del Rosario’s appointment papers on Jan. 2, while Marciano, who was the acting director of Science department’s Advance Science and Technology Institute, was appointed as PhilSA head on Dec. 5, 2019.
The new housing department is designated as the primary national government entity that is responsible for the management of housing, human settlement, and urban development. It is also mandated as the “sole and main planning and policy-making regulatory, program coordination, performance monitoring entity for all housing, human settlement, and urban development concerns, primarily focusing on the access to and the affordability of basic human needs.”
The DHSUD has three bureaus: Environmental, Land Use and Urban Planning and Development Bureau (ELUPDB); Housing and Real Estate Development Regulation Bureau (HREDRB); and Homeowners Associations and Community Development Bureau (HACDB)
On the other hand, President Duterte created the PhilSA through RA 11363 on Aug. 8, 2019.
The PhilSA is an attached agency of the Office of the President tasked to be the central government agency that will plan, develop, and promote the national space program in line with the Philippine Space Policy, which is the country’s primary strategic roadmap for space development.
It is intended to manage and operate the Philippine government’s space program which was decentralized and handled by various agencies of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
The DOST said that country already has enough infrastructure to run a dedicated space agency.
Since 2010, it has spent more than ₱7.48 billion or $144 million for space research and development, and aided 5,500 scholars.
The Philippines also has trained more than 1,000 space science experts, and established 25 facilities in various parts of the Philippines.
The country has also developed three small-scale satellites — Diwata-1, Diwata-2, and Maya-1 — which were already deployed to space. Diwata-1 was deployed into orbit in April 2016, while Diwata-2 was launched in October 2018. Maya-1 was launched into space in June 2018 and was deployed from the International Space Station (ISS).
(with a PNA report)
