Workers load newly harvested sugarcane stalks in Barangay Mabilog in Concepcion town, Tarlac province. The area is part of Hacienda Luisita. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Agrarian Reform has expressed confidence it will be able to complete the installation of land reform beneficiaries of the Hacienda Luisita sugar estate by next month but warned that “outside forces” may try to disrupt the process.
“The DAR is confident that its self-imposed deadline for ‘monumenting’ the lots and installing the farmer beneficiaries, which it has set for May, will be met unless outside forces obstruct its activities,” the agency said in a news release.
“Monumenting” involves the physical delineation of the farm lots to be awarded to the beneficiaries by placing boundary markers or “mujons.”
Agrarian Reform Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Anthony Paruñgao said 5,947 farm lots, or 86.32 percent, had already been delineated as of April 7, according to a report from the DAR provincial office.
He added that beneficiaries under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program had already been installed in 4,478 farm lots, comprising 65 percent of the total.
The DAR has been “encouraging and assisting beneficiaries to build organizations so that DAR would be more effective and efficient in channelling support service programs and resources of the department,” he said.
“We are assisting the farmer beneficiaries in making their transition into owner-cultivators,” Paruñgao said. “We are helping them to organize themselves so that they are able to better organize farm production and marketing of their produce.”
These organizations will make it easier for farmer beneficiaries to access credit because the financial institutions are more inclined to provide loans and financial support to organizations than to individual farmers, he said.
The provincial office of the DAR has been able to assist farmer beneficiaries in organizing themselves in eight of the 10 villages of Hacienda Luisita.
Paruñgao said the monumenting of the lots would have gone faster “had there been no instances of harassment of survey teams and ‘mujons’ being destroyed.”
He said five persons were apprehended on April 3 while allegedly harassing a survey team that was plotting out a lot in the area. The perpetrators were subsequently released pending the filing of appropriate charges.
Paruñgao added that the act of harassment could constitute obstruction of agrarian reform, which under the law, could carry a penalty of six to 12 years imprisonment.
“But the point here is every time such incidents occur it is the beneficiaries who are affected because they have to wait some more in order to get installed in their allocated lots,” Paruñgao added.
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