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CASTELLANA,
Negros Occidental—It is already past noon and yet Edelyn
Pineda is still lazing around Sitio Odiong here along with
her little friends.
The
16-year-old lass, who is physically small compared with
other girls her age—apparently shrunk by malnutrition and
heavy work at a young age—has no plans of going home to
join her parents and her six siblings for lunch.
The girl,
who barely reached fifth grade in a public elementary
school, later admits why: they have nothing for the table,
and the last time she and her family “feasted” on cooked
rice was two days ago.
“’Pag
walang bigas, walang bigas [If there is no rice, there
is no rice],” she hesitantly mutters in the Pilipino
vernacular, as she bows her head.
Later we
learn that a similar situation exists for some of the
families and children in the village.
Pineda
knows poverty but she cannot understand why she has to
skip a regular meal, when her family is an agrarian-reform
beneficiary (ARB), meaning, farmers who have already been
awarded one hectare of land by the government.
Why,
Pineda asks, does she have to suffer from the effects of
an improperly implemented Comprehensive Agrarian Reform
Program (CARP), instead of enjoying its supposed benefits?
At her
early age, Pineda has gone through unimaginable hunger. “Kumakain
lang kami ng kanin tatlong araw sa isang linggo [We
only eat cooked rice three days in a week],” she says, as
tears begin to fall from her eyes.
She says
she and her siblings, including their youngest, who is
just one year old, are constantly hungry, but that they
can do nothing. “Umiiyak na lang po siya hanggang
makatulog na lang [She just cries until she falls
asleep],” the young girl says of her baby sister.
In those
four days in one week that they have no staple, Pineda
says they would usually content themselves with root crops
and vegetables.
Like some
of the luckier girls in the village, she, too, wanted to
go to school and pursue her dream, but again, she needs to
work. In short, a cruel tradeoff between studying and
surviving. “’Pag nag-aral kami, wala kaming kakainin
[If we go to school, we will have nothing to eat],” she
elaborates, wiping tears that by now have completely
drenched an innocent face.
Nenita
Parafina, who lives in the same village and whose family
is also an ARB, says Pineda’s story is not new, but
rather, is a common tale among residents in Sitio Odiong.
“Kung
kakain kami sa umaga at tanghali, sa gabi, hindi na kami
kakain [If we eat in the morning and afternoon, we
will no longer eat in the evening],” she says
matter-of-factly, underlining more of the bizarre, bitter
choices that families like the Pinedas and the Parafinas
have been forced to make each day.
Like
Pineda’s family, Parafina says she and her family also
work in an hacienda, earning from P60 to P80 a day—a
pittance for a backbreaking job, but even that is rare.
These days, seldom does the hacienda have available work
for them. Yes, even if they’ll take anything, anything at
all, she stresses.
Sitio
Odiong and its residents, who are all ARBs, are living
testaments to the failure of the agrarian-reform program.
Or, at least, its checkered record.
The
village, which forms part of barangay Camandag, bears no
resemblance to normal life, to say the least. It has no
electricity and the residents have to walk more than a
kilometer to a “nearby” hacienda just to get potable water
for household needs.
As CARP
has failed in many areas, so has the delivery of the
social service programs from the local government.
ARBs, land
owners, nongovernment organizations, international
organizations and even provincial and municipal
governments that are hosts to CARP are all lamenting that
the agrarian program failed, “because of the absence of
support services from the government.”
Sitio
Odiong, which is more or less 7 km away from La Castellana
town proper, is forsaken in terms of government projects.
The
condition of its unpaved and narrow road is unbearable,
offering only tricycles as a means of public
transportation.
“Gusto
namin farm-to-market road, tubig din na maiinom at
iba pang project na pangako ng CARP. Gusto
naming makapag-aral ang aming mga anak [We want
farm-to-market roads, a potable water system and other
projects promised under the CARP. We want our children to
go to school and finish their education],” says Parafina,
who is “privileged” among the elders in the village enough
to speak Tagalog.
The
agrarian-reform program was supposed to bring projects to
areas that it covered as a form of assistance to
beneficiaries, but local governments in this province say
they could not afford to deliver the social support
infrastructure as the money that was supposed to finance
them would partly come from CARP in the form of taxes
collected.
As it is,
some land owners, who have not been properly paid by the
government for the acquisition of their lands, have not
been able to pay their various taxes along with the
incapable beneficiaries.
Under the
law, 40 percent of real-property tax revenues are supposed
to go to the local governments’ Special Education Fund for
public schools. A recent government study has indicated up
to P 1.2 billion in real-property taxes in the province
have remained unpaid.
Most
villagers in Sitio Odiong agree that they were even better
off when they were still tillers (dumaan) in large
haciendas than as CARP beneficiaries.
Then, the
education of their children was supported by their
landlords; they were covered by the Social Security System
as regular workers, and they could easily go to their
landlords when they needed money. Now, they are on their
own.
The
villagers also revealed an alarming trend: some municipal
agrarian-reform officers have even become virtual
landlords; they “buy” the rights from ARBs by convincing
the hapless folk to “mortgage” their rights for four or
more years until they are able to repay the “loans,” which
are extended to them at 5 percent of the value of the
land. At the moment, agricultural land in
Negros is valued at anywhere from P150,000 to P200,000 per hectare.
At a rate
of about 5 percent of the land value, ARBs are able to
“loan” anywhere from P36,000 to P40,000 for their
landholding, with the money going to off-season family
expenses and for preparing for the next planting season.
Ultimately, they fall into deeper and deeper debt and are
left with no choice but to work again as farmhands in
their own land, along with their children, being paid
daily wages. The child laborers clear the land of weeds,
being paid pakyaw (package) rates per hectare!
Like the
Pineda and the Parafina families, Marcelita Fernando, 52,
and her family have pawned their certificate of land
ownership agreement (CLOA) to a financier, executing only
handwritten documents which are not notarized, as CLOAs
are not recognized as negotiable financial instruments
under the CARP law that expires in June 2008.
“We could
do nothing, we could not touch the land, as we have no
money,” she says in the vernacular, with a volunteer who
has been working with the villagers translating for her.
Fernando says their land has been pawned for 12 years.
They need
money, she says, to rent a carabao (water buffalo) or a
tractor to plow their land, to buy seeds and other farm
inputs. They also need fertilizers and insecticides to
maintain their crops, and they only harvest once in a
year, especially in the case of sugar cane.
“So the
best option for us is just to pawn our lands,” Fernando
concludes.
For the
villagers, the CARP itself is a problem, according to her,
as it classifies beneficiaries into first, second and
third priorities.
Yet, at
the end of the day, the “priority” tag becomes a
meaningless classification for people who feel neither a
sense of urgency nor empathy from the experts who craft
policy and the bureaucrats supposed to translate lofty
ideals like “emancipation” into concrete improvements in
quality of life.
No,
there’s no emancipation in their lives, just a relentless
series of tough choices and shattered dreams. Their
aspirations are simple and little, but even that can’t be
fulfilled because those above them have failed, big time.
(The author is a journalist for over 30 years and has
worked in the broadcast media in various capacities in the
field of news and public affairs. Mr. Gagelonia was former
member of the Unesco National Commission for the
Philippines and also served as director of the Philippine
Broadcasting Service. He began the op-ed column “At
Midfield” in The Philippine Chronicle and continues to
write on various national issues including agrarian
reform, public governance and the energy sector in his
online blog at midfield.wordpress.com. His e-mail:
dingg458@yahoo.com.) |
