DAR hastens parceling awarded land

After getting funding from the World Bank, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has launched a new program meant to hasten the subdivision of lands expropriated under the land reform law and the issuance of individual land titles.

Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones on Thursday said the project, called Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT), would run until 2024 and involve 1.36 million hectares across the country tilled by 1.14 million agrarian reform beneficiaries.

“During the first year of SPLIT project implementation, initial activities will include the inventory of (collective certificates of land ownership award), validation, survey of 15,388 ha, registration and titling of 29,660 (certificates of land ownership award) which is equivalent to 35,592 ha,” he said in a statement.

Waiting ‘for decades’

He said the project is expected to improve land tenure security and stabilize property rights of farmer-beneficiaries, who have been granted lands under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program but have been waiting for their individual titles “for decades.”

Although the Duterte administration had committed to hasten the issuance of land titles since the beginning of its term, the P24.62-billion project could not take off until the World Bank approved P19.24 billion in loans with the government providing a counterpart fund of P5.38 billion.

The project will also include capability building and technical assistance, as well as project management, monitoring and evaluation.

Castriciones said improved parcelization procedures and new survey techniques to generate individual titles would be tested in priority regions, particularly in Ilocos, Eastern Visayas and Zamboanga Peninsula, where previous land-mapping projects had been done by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

The DAR will spearhead the project implementation, in partnership with the DENR, the Land Registration Authority, Registry of Deeds, Land Bank of the Philippines, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, and the Department of the Interior and Local Government.