Time running out on agrarian reform
Quezon farmers march from Lucena City to Manila on Tuesday, June 3, 2014, to demand the completion of the government’s land reform program and the return of the coconut levy fund. DELFIN T. MALLARI JR./INQUIRER SOUTHERN LUZON FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines–Time is running out on a social justice program launched by democracy icon Corazon Aquino 26 years ago.
Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de Los Reyes on Wednesday admitted his department would not be able to complete the distribution of lands before the expiration of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp) on June 30.
The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) also would likely not be able to serve notices of coverage (NOC) to all private agricultural lands required under the law to be distributed to landless farmers, the official said.
“We’re hoping to serve NOCs to all private agricultural lands by June 30, but I don’t think it’s possible,” De Los Reyes said.
As of May 20, some 14,085 landholdings spread over 88,962 hectares of land had not been issued NOCs. Under the law, the DAR may continue distributing lands that have been issued NOCs even beyond the June 30 deadline.
Non-CARPable
In total, the DAR still needs to distribute some 550,192 ha of land out of the remaining balance of 771,795 ha as of Jan. 1, De Los Reyes said.
He explained that the DAR had deducted from that target some 80,000 ha of those lands that were “non-CARPable,” meaning they could not be covered by CARP because these are creeks, roads, above 18 percent slope, or undeveloped.
Another 150,000 ha have been subtracted from the DAR’s target, as these are expected to be “retained” by landowners, especially those with landholdings 10 ha and below. The CARP law states that a landowner may only retain a maximum of five ha of land.
The late President Corazon Aquino signed the CARP law on June 10, 1988, as the centerpiece of her campaign promise to promote social justice, ease rural poverty and address a simmering communist insurgency.
From 1989, when CARP took effect, to 2013, the DAR distributed some 4.34 million ha to over 2 million beneficiaries, official data from the agency showed.
Bill extends NOCs by 2 yrs
De Los Reyes said he supported a bill filed by Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat to extend by two years the period that agrarian reform officials are allowed to issue NOCs for landholdings.
Baguilat said moving the deadline would mean that more private and government lands that were not among those targeted for coverage by the DAR could still be included in CARP’s coverage, in order to complete the constitutional mandate for agrarian reform.
President Aquino has certified that bill urgent, a move De Los Reyes said he was backing.
De Los Reyes attributed the slowness of the distribution process to a number of factors, including “complications” in the DAR’s database, bureaucracy, missing land titles, incomplete addresses and incorrect classification of the land.
“What the public does not understand is we don’t have a central database. What we’re using is the 2009 list, which we needed to clean first because some of the lands listed there have been distributed, etc.,” he said.
‘No other time but now’
On Wednesday, Archbishop Antonio Ledesma of Cagayan de Oro and members of farmer groups led by Task Force Mapalad filed a petition in the DAR seeking the issuance of NOCs to about 35,000 landholdings covering 271,000 ha of land spread out in 22 provinces.
“Time is running out for issuing NOCs and we find no other time but now. Hoping that this letter-petition be given due course before CARPer expires come June 30, 2014,” the groups said in the petition addressed to De Los Reyes.
De Los Reyes said he and his staff had already started poring over the list.
Based on our initial inspection, we found many entries that have already been issued NOCs, so we will need to consolidate and check it against our own list,” he said.
De Los Reyes earlier said he did not think an extension of the CARP law was necessary. The law—CARP with reforms, or CARPer—was last extended in 2009.
Systematic deception
Militant lawmakers on Wednesday lambasted moves to fast-track the approval of the Baguilat bill.
“Millions of farmers have nothing to gain and everything to lose if CARPer is extended,” said Anakpawis Rep. Fernando Hicap. “DAR has yet to explain and account in detail how it spent the P150-billion CARPer budget from 2009 to 2014.”
He added that what was certain was that the President’s family was paid
P471 million for the vast sugar estate Hacienda Luisita, which was included in the CARP coverage.
According to Hicap, farmers suspect that the period to issue NOCs would be extended for the benefit of the landlords.
“As far as farmers are concerned, the measure further extending the bogus CARPer was approved in haste to make a milking cow out of the land reform program,” he said.
“The sham CARP is mainly designed to strengthen big landlords’ control over the land,” Rafael Mariano, chair of the peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, said in a statement.
The 26-year-old CARP law, he said, has run too long. “Not only is it the longest systematic deceit of the farmers, it also happens to be the most expensive land reform in the world,” he said.
Originally posted at 5:04 pm | Wednesday, June 4, 2014
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