Developer to bring fight vs land reform to SC

ILOILO CITY—A company planning to develop Sicogon Island into a world-class tourist destination plans to petition the Supreme Court to stop the use of parts of the island for the government’s agrarian reform program.

Lawyer Rene Espiritu, one of the legal counsels of Sicogon Development Corp. (Sideco), said the company did not recognize the legality of a move made by the Department of Agrarian Reform to place parts of the island under agrarian reform and distribute these to the landless.

Espiritu said DAR erred when it classified parts of the island as agrarian reform areas and their residents as farmers.

He said Sicogon should not be subjected to agrarian reform because it is a tourism zone and its residents are fishermen, not farmers.

Lawyer Alain Ross Somile, also a legal counsel of Sideco, said at least 345 hectares of the total 809-ha property of Sideco in Sicogon have been subjected to compulsory acquisition, a mode of acquiring land for the agrarian reform program.

Tension is gripping the island over the long-drawn dispute between Sideco and a group of residents who accused the company of forcibly ejecting them from their homes and of taking over public lands to pave the way for a P10-billion development project on the 1,160-ha island.

Sideco, a company controlled by the Sarrosa family, plans to revive the island as a world-class destination with a foreign partner. The company plans to build a five-star hotel, seaport and airport.

The island, part of Carles town, Iloilo province, 146 km northeast of here, was a top tourist destination in the 1970s because of its white sand beach.