Coconut farmers remind Rody of promise

LIFE is a vicious cycle for the coconut farmers of Quezon province. DELFIN T. MALLARI JR/INQUIRER SOUTHERN LUZON/FILE PHOTO

LUCENA CITY —With the first 100 days in office of President Duterte largely consumed by the campaign against illegal drugs, a coconut farmers’ group said a promise to return the coconut levy fund to farmers within that period was bound not to be kept.

“Malacañang, Congress and the Senate are now too engrossed with the drug war while millions of coconut farmers, most of them old, sickly and dying, are still waiting for the return of the coco levy, as [Mr. Duterte] promised during the campaign,’’ Maribel Luzara, president of Kilusang Magbubukid sa Bondoc Peninsula, said Sunday.

Luzara said the President and his running mate, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, in a campaign sortie in Catanauan, Quezon, in March, promised the coconut farmers the money would be distributed within 100 days of the Duterte administration.

“We all rejoiced after [Mr. Duterte] made that promise in memory of his late mother,” Luzara said.

She said Mr. Duterte, in his speech, narrated how his late mother was also a victim of the coco levy scam.
List of plans
During the visit, Mr. Duterte and Cayetano, she said, signed a list of plans on the disposition of the fund once they won. Topping the list was ensuring that coconut farmers benefit from the coco levy during the first 100 days of the Duterte administration.

Farmers from Quezon, a major coconut-producing province, are believed to be the biggest contributors to the coco levy fund, a tax exacted from them between 1973 and 1982, during the Marcos regime.

The Presidential Commission on Good Government estimated the coco levy assets to be worth P83 billion — P73 billion in cash (liquidated shares from San Miguel Corp.) and P10 billion in shares in United Coconut Planters Bank and oil mills operated by the Coconut Industry Investment Fund.
Beneficiaries
The fund is expected to benefit millions of coconut farmers and their families from about 21,000 coconut-producing barangays across the country.

Luzara appealed to Mr. Duterte to fulfill his campaign promise.

Several times, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol reported the President had ordered the release of the coconut levy fund to the farmers.

No legislative measure, however, has been approved to support the directive, the farmers said. Delfin T. Mallari Jr., Inquirer Southern Luzon