Landless farmers picket DAR office

BACKBREAKING WORK Workers load newly harvested sugarcane stalks in Barangay Mabilog in Concepcion town, Tarlac province. The area is part of Hacienda Luisita. INQUIRER PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Dozens of landless farmers picketed the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) on Thursday to call attention to the slowness and ineffectiveness of the agency in implementing land reform before the June 30 deadline.

They blasted Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes for “misleading the public and the legislative branch” in a report on the agency’s previous accomplishments and future targets during the committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Feb. 5.

“Secretary De los Reyes revealed that the 4,099 hectares in Hacienda Luisita were already included in the 2013 accomplishment report. Yet, farmworkers are not physically installed and could not enjoy their awarded lands,” the farmers belonging to Save the Agrarian Reform Alliance (Sara) said in a statement.

“This form of reporting is not only misleading; it’s an outright padding of accomplishments and statistics when clearly land distribution has not been completed,” said Jaime Tadeo, Sara spokesman and a former constitutional commissioner.

The farmers also criticized the DAR’s inability to issue notices of coverage (NOCs) for 206,000 ha, which would be left undistributed when the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) expires on June 30.

De los Reyes has allayed fears that the expiration of the CARP would put a stop to land distribution.

He said the DAR could still process and distribute landholdings beyond June 2014 provided it was able to issue NOCs to the property in question before the deadline.

“The DAR is on the defensive, hiding behind technical excuses. Why not be on the offensive? With barely five months to go before the June 30, 2014, deadline for land distribution, it is high time for the agency to issue all NOCs now and deal with the landowners later,” Tadeo said.

In June 1988, the government of then President Corazon Aquino enacted the CARP through Republic Act No. 6657, seeking a more equitable distribution of agricultural lands to farmers and farmworkers.

Subsequent amendments in Congress extended CARP until 2014.

But due to concerns about DAR’s low land distribution output, a bill has been filed in the House of Representatives to extend CARP by another five years. De los Reyes earlier said he welcomed the proposal but did not think it was necessary.—DJ Yap