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DAVAO
CITY—About 1.2 million hectares of land are still
awaiting acquisition for distribution to 1 million
farmers nationwide, many of them owned by corporations
and powerful politically influential families, the
Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) said.
“A big
number of these large tracts of lands are also the most
contested,” according to DAR Undersecretary for field
operations Narciso Nieto, who attended a news briefing
Tuesday at the Apo View Hotel here, that announced the
official transfer of the DAR Central Office to the
compound occupied by the Southern Philippines
Development Authority (SPDA).
“Take
the cases of
Cuenca [in La Castellana, Negros Occidental] and Sumilao [Bukidnon],
for instance. These are the kind of landholdings that
are left to distribute,” he said.
Nieto
said that it would take at least six years to acquire
these lands and distribute them to farmers. “Give us
six to 10 years to acquire and distribute them to the
landless farmers,” he said.
Nieto
said that the DAR made easier progress with the
acquisition of lands with less resistance from its
owners since the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program
(CARP) started in 1988.
In 2007
the DAR covered about 145,000 hectares, from a target of
130,000 hectares. In previous years, the DAR had been
covering agricultural lands at a rate of 100,000
hectares.
The CARP
was a 10-year program that was supposed to end in 1998,
but due to the deferment of coverage of corporate farms,
or big landholdings or plantations devoted to raising
cash crops for export including banana, sugar and
pineapple, the expiration was moved 10 years more, or in
June this year.
The DAR
was created to implement the CARP.
Despite
the uncertainty of the fate of the program, the Arroyo
administration has pushed with the transfer of the
central office in Quezon City to the compound occupied
by the SPDA in Catalunan Pequeño, 15 kilometers south of
downtown Davao City.
The move
was part of the program of President Arroyo to
decentralize the National Capital Region of the central
offices of government departments. These departments
include the Department of Agriculture, ready to be
transferred to Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental; the
Department of Transportation and Communications to
Clark, Pampanga; and the Department of Tourism to
Cebu City.
“According to the statement of [Bicol] Rep. Edcel Lagman,
the DAR would still continue to operate, and in any
event, what would probably be taken out is its function
of acquisition and distribution of lands,” Nieto said.
“Only the support services and the justice delivery
would be retained.”
“What we
would hope, however, is that Congress would retain our
function to acquire and distribute the remaining lands,”
he said.
In case
the acquisition and distribution of lands would be taken
out from its functions, the DAR would likely trim down
its total work force of 50,000 personnel by about 60
percent to 70 percent.
“These
are the personnel we have assigned in these functions,
although a number of them have multitasks in the support
services also,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Task Force Mapalad, which was helping the
farmers in many contested properties, including the
Sumilao farmers, held a march protest Thursday, dubbed
“Unity Walk: Lakbay Pagkakaisa Para sa Karapatan sa Lupa.”
The
march was from the
North Harbor,
where farmers from the contested lands in Bukidnon,
Davao Oriental, Negros Occidental and Batangas
disembarked, to the DAR office in
Quezon City.
About
100 farmers from the Arroyo lands in Negros Occidental,
Teves Estate in Negros Oriental, Fortich Estate in
Bukidnon, Consunji Estate in Davao Oriental and Henessy
Estate in Batangas province attended.
The Task
Force Mapalad and its affiliate members have dared the
Arroyo administration to distribute the lands in these
landholdings, following the disclosure of Archbishop
Antonio Ledesma of Zamboanga City that the President’s
brother in law was reportedly blocking moves to extend
the CARP. |
