Palace, DAR asked to stop reversing gains of CARP

LUCENA CITY—A councilor of the town where lands given to farmers under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) are being taken away by the government appealed to Malacañang and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to stop reversing CARP’s gains in the town.

Minerva Remo, chair of the Sariaya municipal council’s land use and planning committee, said the DAR and Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa should cease revoking certificates of land ownership awards (Cloa) that farmers received as proofs of ownership of lands that they got under CARP.

Remo said the revocation of Cloas should cease pending resolution by the local government of Sariaya of questions surrounding a 1982 zoning ordinance that classified lands covered by CARP in the town as nonagricultural.

The ordinance is being used by landlords in the town to undo the achievements of CARP.

Remo said she had personally appealed to local and regional DAR officials to suspend the revocation of the Cloas to no avail.

“The landowners are more powerful. They go straight to the top,” she said in a phone

interview. She refused to elaborate, however.

Farmers holding Cloas plan to stage protest actions next week to press for a repeal of the 1982 zoning ordinance.

Romeo Clavo, head of the group Ugnayan ng Magsasaka sa Gitnang Quezon (Ugnayan), said the farmers decided to be more proactive in their quest to protect CARP’s gains instead of just waiting for government to act.

Clavo said Cloa holders have been pushed to a corner where they have no choice but fight back. “Taking away the lands already awarded to them is like killing the farmers,” said Clavo in an interview at the office of the group Quezon Association for Rural Development and Democratization Services in this city.

Malacañang has been consistently ruling in favor of landlords in Sariaya. On May 28 last year, Ochoa rejected the appeal of six Cloa holders to keep their lands.

One of the Cloa holders died from depression after losing her land.

Last week, seven Cloa holders were also ordered evicted from their lands by the DAR.

Remo said she had asked farmers and groups helping them to submit a petition to

repeal the 1982 zoning ordinance.

Clavo said, however, that the farmers had already submitted such a petition three years ago. “If local officials really want to act on our grievances, they should just retrieve the files from documents that we submitted,” he said.

He said at least 255 CARP beneficiaries in Sariaya face losing their lands and have pending cases in Malacañang. The Cloa holders are now tilling CARP lands in the villages of Bignay 1, Manggalang, Kiling, Concepcion 1 and Concepcion Pinagbakuran.

“They also face dispossession of their land if the Cloa revocation will continue,” he said.