SAN FRANCISCO, Agusan del Sur—Officials of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in this province claimed milestone achievements especially in the distribution of lands to Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries (ARBs) 35 years after the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) was put in place in the country.
CARP’s anniversary is celebrated on June 30 every year.
Engr. Loida Jones, Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer II, said some 60,904 ARBs were already individually given to an average of three-hectare farmlands or a total of 182,712 hectares covered by CARP owing about 18 percent of the 998,952 hectares of Agusan del Sur’s total land area.
Jones noted that since CARP was implemented in the province, several ARBs farming cooperatives have sustainably progressed, based on the assessment of the Cooperative Development Authority.
“We are proud to say that after 35 years, these cooperatives have improved and made the lives better of their members,” Jones said
Taking center stage in CARP implementation are the thousands of former farm workers of multinational oil palm plantations who were the first ARBs in 1988 to receive Collective Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CCLOA) titles from the late former president Corazon Aquino in Cagayan de Oro City.
The 7,000 hectares of the oil palm plantation were covered under CARP when Aquino assumed her post after learning that most of the landholdings were forcibly grabbed from farmers through harassment and intimidation by the dreaded “Lost Command” paramilitary group led by the late constabulary colonel Carlos Lademora.
All of the ARBs of the five ARB cooperatives of the defunct National Development Corporation-Guthrie Plantations were already given individual titles through the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) project of the Department of Agrarian Reform.
The P24 million SPLIT project was funded through a World Bank loan grant which will involve about 1.38 million hectares of collective CLOAs in the country.
The SPLIT project staff identified about 3,800 hectares of oil palm plantation CCLOA lands will be covered for individual titling.
Even with a wide coverage of CARP in the province, Jones reported there are still 1,800 hectares left to be worked out of which 1,000 hectares are being processed while another 800 hectares are still problematic needing legal remedies.
The 1,000 hectares for CARP coverage is among the 2,300 hectares of lands that will be rewarded throughout Caraga during an event on July 7 of which the CLOAs are already part of President Ferdinand R. Marcos order imposing a one-year moratorium on payments of P635 per hectare per year to the Land Bank of the Philippines and interests of loans to the same bank.
DAR Secretary Conrado M. Estrella III said the issuance of the EO is in preparation for the passage of a law that would condone the loans of ARBs with unpaid amortization and interest payments.
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