DAR employees dunned for P60M in loans

The Department of Agrarian Reform Employees’ Foundation (DARE Foundation) is racing against time to collect P60-million loans from member-employees in the face of reports that DAR’s operations would be scaled down in a few years’ time.

The loans have accumulated because the DAR approved the employees association’s petition to stop payment through payroll deduction sometime in 2005 and 2006, making payment voluntary, DARE Foundation chairman and president Violeta Bonilla said.

On the foundation’s petition, the Court of Appeals ordered the DAR in September to deduct payment from the payroll, but there were some employees who objected to this by going to court, or maligning the foundation in press statements, she said.

Still an obligation

“So even if they will be out of the DAR, we will still require them to pay because it’s their obligation. This is, after all, the money of DAR employees,” she said in an interview.

The P60 million is due from 472 member-employees. It forms part of the foundation’s “pool of savings” or contributions by 4,800 members. The money can be withdrawn by individual members once they retire.

Organized in 1998, the DARE Foundation provides livelihood and financial assistance to DAR employees and manages health care, savings and retirement benefits for them.

Bonilla, also the chief of the DAR’s land tenure and documentation division, said she had heard  reports that DAR operations would be scaled down starting next year in preparation for its possible merger with the Department of Agriculture (DA).

Case vs 2 members

Bonilla also said the foundation had gone to court to compel two members, Antonia Pascual and Gloria Almazan, to pay outstanding loans amounting to P111,759.63 and P139,866.40, respectively.

She said that the pair had refused to pay up even after the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 37 ordered them to do so in 2009, prompting the foundation to move for the issuance of a writ of execution against them. The respondents have  asked for more time to reply to the motion.

If the motion is granted, the court sheriff would freeze the property and accounts, and forfeit the salary and separation pay of Pascual, now an executive assistant at the Office of the Secretary, and Almazan, senior agrarian reform program officer, in favor of the foundation, Bonilla said.

“We’re also contemplating the filing of charges against them for maligning me, and that includes the writers,” she said, adding that she believed the two were behind press reports that she had been charged before the Office of the Ombudsman for alleged misdeclaration of her statement of assets and liabilities.