Quezon farmers’ groups assail plan on cash handouts
LUCENA CITY—Peasant groups in Quezon protested plans to tag coconut farmers and their families as beneficiaries of the government’s cash dole program, saying what they needed was the return of billions of pesos in coco levy funds.
Euclides Forbes, head of the Philippine Coconut Administration (PCA), said his office was drafting an agreement with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to include coconut farmers on the list of beneficiaries of the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).
The PCA administrator said one of the conditions for coconut farmers to receive cash from 4Ps is to continue planting coconuts.
4Ps is a program carried over from the Arroyo administration that hands out cash to supposedly the poorest of the poor. Malacañang is seeking a P39 billion budget for it next year.
Jojo Clavo, chair of the farmers’ group Ugnayan ng Magsasaka sa Gitnang Luzon, said the cash dole won’t solve the problems of coconut farmers. What government should do, he said, is return the billions of pesos collected from farmers from 1973 to 1982.
The cash dole, he said, was like “pacifying coconut farmers with candies.”
Clavo’s late grandfather was one of thousands of Quezon farmers who paid the levy exacted from coconut farmers during the time of the dead dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
Quezon, a coconut-producing province, is believed to be the biggest contributor to the levy.
Oscar Santos, former legislator and advocate of the return of the levy to coconut farmers, said while giving cash doles to the farmers wasn’t a bad idea, the government should continue to recover the coco levy funds, which could require reviving a case against businessman Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco alleging that Cojuangco used coco levy funds to acquire shares in San Miguel Corp.
The Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of Cojuangco, saying the uncle of President Aquino didn’t use coco levy funds to acquire his San Miguel shares.
Under the cash dole program, beneficiary families could receive an average of P1,400 a month each in cash handouts.
Pedro Gonzalez, a fisherman and coconut farmer from Gumaca, Quezon, urged the Aquino administration to recover the P130-billion coconut levy fund from private groups and return the money to coconut farmers.
Gonzalez, vice chair of the fisherman’s group Pamalakaya, said recovering the funds would require political will on the part of Mr. Aquino.
Rep. Lorenzo “Erin” Tanada III (Quezon, 4th district) has filed a bill that would establish the Coconut Farmers Trust Fund (CFTF) which would initially be capitalized with money from the Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF).
CFTF seeks to finance programs for coconut farmers to improve productivity, develop coconut-based enterprises and reduce poverty among them.
