Women farmers lay claim to 80,000 ha for CARP

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—The Pambansang Koalisyon ng Kababaihan sa Kanayunan (PKKK) has filed petitions for the issuance of notices of coverage (NOCs) for agrarian reform of more than 80,000 hectares of land nationwide in a bid to have these distributed to landless women farmers.

Trinidad Domingo, PKKK spokesperson, said the petitions were filed in the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) on Thursday.

“The filing of the petitions was in response to the clamor of rural women to own lands to sustain their families by farming,” Domingo told Inquirer by telephone.

PKKK raced against the June 30 deadline when the authority of the DAR to issue NOC expires. DAR said it still could acquire and distribute lands as long as these have NOCs.

Bills extending the period of issuing NOCs have been certified as urgent by President Aquino, said Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes in a June 19 news briefing in Baguio City.

De los Reyes said the agency has enough work to fulfill even after the agency’s NOC powers expire.

“July 1 is not the end of the world,” he said. “We will need the NOC extension law eventually, but not on July 1.”

He said Republic Act No. 9700 (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program) allows DAR to “continue distributing lands” even after DAR’s power to issue NOCs expires.

He said DAR intends to complete all NOC services by June 30, but is confronted by land titling problems.

He said while the DAR has a database in 2009 on which landholdings are supposed to be under CARP, “there is no existing database which tells you what is already CARP-covered.”

“Your land title does not say if it is agricultural,” he said.

He said the same ambiguity characterizes lands claimed and secured by tax declarations. There are also land titles for agrarian lands that have been lost or destroyed.

PKKK has demanded De los Reyes’ resignation for the “snailpaced distribution” of a DAR backlog of 1.5 million hectares, said Domingo.

Anthony Parungao, agrarian reform undersecretary for legal affairs, said the PKKK petitions would be endorsed to regional directors and “shall be treated as agrarian law implementation (ALI) cases.”

He, however, added that “submission does not automatically mean coverage.” “It shall pass through the legal process,” he said. Reports from Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon, and Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon