CONCEPCION, TARLAC -- AT least 200 farmers greeted with protests the opening of the Clark-Tarlac segment of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEx) on Friday, staging pickets in at least four overpasses along the route.

Holding banners and streamers, they scored the Bases Conversion and Development Authority for the delay in the construction of overpasses, service roads to their farms, and drainage system and in the release of their land titles.

Soldiers assigned to the Task Force Bantay SCTEx maintained their distance from the protesters who staged the pickets at the overpasses in the villages of Ligaya 1, Ligaya 2, Tinang and Mabilog.

“We thought President Macapagal-Arroyo is coming in today’s opening rites. We wanted to tell her our situation,” said Jesus Lising, village chief of Santiago.

Lising said 150 farmers in the village could not easily reach their farms because the expressway was built in the old service roads.

The Tollways Management Corp., which operates the SCTEx, has put metal fences along the highway, barring people and farm animals from crossing the road.

Farmer Genaro Timbol needs to get to both sides of the road to work on his land because the expressway had cut through the farms.

Tired of taking the longer route, which entailed more than an hour of walking, Timbol last week bore holes on the metal fences to allow him to easily cross the highway. The highway patrol arrested and charged him with trespassing.

“The rice grains are already falling. I borrowed P20,000 to plant this wet [cropping] season. I had to save my crops,” Timbol said.

The palay in the five-hectare farm of Jose Manaloto, 68, are ready for harvest but he said he could not bring the threshers there for lack of service roads.

In Barangay Ligaya 1, Reynaldo Macalino had failed to till his half-hectare farm, which was what was left to him after the highway was built. He said water runoff from the road flooded his farm because there was no drainage canals installed.

For this harvest period, farm workers Conchita Muan and Rosemarie Antonio could not retrieve the fallen grains that they stock for their families.

“The irony is we are forced to line up to buy rice from the [National Food Authority],” Muan said.

Seventy farmers in Ligaya 1 like Benigno Macalino wanted their land titles back.