SUGAR workers have toiled for decades at Hacienda Luisita until land reform and a recent Supreme Court order compelled their employers to give them a piece of the land. E.I. REYMOND OREJAS/CONTRIBUTOR
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—The Unyon ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) urged the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to revoke 11 stock distribution option (SDO) plans covering 7,703 hectares of agrarian land, which offers land reform beneficiaries a share in company profits instead of receiving farmlands.
UMA also wanted the revocation of 433 agribusiness venture arrangements (AVA) over 57,000 ha of agrarian land.
All these parcels of land, long covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), should instead be given to landless farmers, according to Danilo Ramos, UMA secretary-general, in a Saturday telephone interview.
UMA sought the revocation of the SDO and AVA in a petition submitted to the DAR at the close of the national sugar workers summit on Aug. 31.
DAR Administrative Order No. 1-2006, issued during the time of the late President Corazon Aquino, states that stock shares may be given to CARP beneficiaries who agree to the SDO approved by the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC).
It considers companies that divest themselves “of a portion of their capital stock, equity or participation in favor of their workers” as having complied with the requirements of CARP.
But corporations which granted this land reform option must prove that stock shares would grant eligible farmers more income compared to the option of fragmenting and distributing lands to them.
Meanwhile, DAR AO No. 9-2006 defines the AVA as an entrepreneurial collaboration between the beneficiaries and investor to implement an agribusiness venture using agrarian land.
The National Economic and Development Authority said there are as much as 1.2 million ha under various AVAs in 2013.
But Ramos said “big landlords and foreign agriculture corporations use these schemes to evade land distribution.”
But an SDO revocation does not guarantee the automatic distribution of lands, gauging by the case of Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac province.
The PARC, during the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, revoked the SDO in Luisita, but Hacienda Luisita Inc., which is 70-percent owned by the Cojuangco family, challenged that decision all the way to the Supreme Court.
In 2012, the high court upheld the PARC 2004 decision and ordered the DAR to distribute 4,500 ha to 6,300 ha of Luisita to farm workers.
Ramos said the Duterte administration should ask Congress to pass the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill that the Anakpawis party-list group had filed, to correct the SDO provisions allowed by CARP.
In a statement, Ramos said the Duterte administration should “completely junk these nonland transfer schemes” that continue to deprive peasants and agricultural tagworkers of their land rights. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon