DAR targets lands spared from CARP

BACOLOD CITY—Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano said he would expand agrarian reform coverage to include lands that had been exempted from the program or converted to other uses to skirt inclusion.

He also promised to correct erroneous notices of coverage on thousands of hectares of land that had delayed land distribution.

Mariano met on Friday with 684 farmers in Negros Occidental that has the largest agrarian reform backlog in the country, with a balance of 91,000 hectares still to be distributed.

The total backlog for the Negros Island Region (NIR), composed of Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental, is 101,000 ha.

The backlog in Negros Oriental reached 10,000, according to Stephen Leonidas, Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) NIR director.

Notices of coverage have been issued for most of the 101,000 ha.

He added that the DAR was correcting erroneous notices of coverage on 35,650 ha which are part of the 91,000 ha backlog in Negros Occidental.

“The DAR is looking at the reissuance or amendments to the erroneous NOCs to address the problem and to prevent legal challenges from landowners,” he said.

The DAR, he said, is also talking with the Register of Deeds over complaints of “chop-chop” land titles, where large land areas with a single title are broken up into smaller portions with multiple titles to prevent the property from being covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

“There is a need for close coordination between the DAR and the Register of Deeds to prevent the issuance of ‘chop-chop’ titles on land already covered by agrarian reform,” he said.

The Register of Deeds should seek clearance from the DAR before issuing these titles, he added.

Leonidas said the practice of breaking up land titles was rampant in Negros Occidental, a known landlord bastion.

A DAR report cited the 140.9-hectare Hacienda Tinijaban in Barangay San Jose, EB Magalona in Negros Occidental as an example of an area with chopped up land titles.

While the law mandating the agrarian reform program has already expired, it allows the DAR to continue issuing notices of coverage for lands that are to be distributed to farmers.

Militant groups are demanding an agrarian reform program that would distribute lands for free to farmers and lead to confiscation of parcels of land that had been illegally acquired by their owners.