MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 12, 2012) – A Filipino farmers’ group Task Force Mapalad has taken Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes to task for excluding 77,000 hectares of untitled private agricultural lands from the coverage of the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
TFM said De los Reyes should have known a decade ago that jurisdiction over untitled PALs had been given to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) by virtue of Republic Act No. 9176, which was enacted into law on November 13, 2002.
The group chided De los Reyes for “offering another excuse for the low accomplishment rating of his department as far as the land acquisition and distribution component of CARP is concerned.”
“Mabuti pa si Paqcuiao, walang excuses noong na-knockout. Si De los Reyes, linggo-linggo may bagong dahilan kung bakit kulelat siya sa LAD accomplishment rate niya. Kailan kaya manana-knockout si De los Reyes para walang ring excuses?” TFM asked.
“The President gave him a lease on life in June, when he was retained to work on LAD. It is now up to the President to see how he performed in the last six months and whether he has become a liability to his administration or not,” it said.
TFM complained that since July 2012, the DAR has been producing reports that tended to condition the minds of the people that LAD cannot be completed before the CARP Extension with Reforms Law ends in June 2014.
De los Reyes claimed earlier that up to 65,000 hectares of land under LAD are being processed by the Land Registration Authority while thousands of hectares are still subject to valuation by the Land Bank of the Philippines while large parcels of land are still to be surveyed by DENR.
“These are oblique means employed to avoid getting the flak for his 18 percent LAD accomplishment rate from January 2012 to October 31,2012. Rather than take the rap, De los Reyes claims the LRA, LBP and DENR are not up to par in performing their work. This is pathetic,” TFM said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
It said DAR has been working with DENR, LRA and LBP all along, and the panels formed to speed up LAD could have soldiered on to persuade these agencies to speed up work so they could comply with the directive issued by President Aquino on June 24, 2012 for all CARP areas to be covered by NOCs, with the distribution hastened, the group added.
“We have to believe it but De los Reyes may eventuall go to the extent of saying that the President’s order was humanly impossible to achieve. That will be the day,” TFM said.
On the other hand, Alyansa Bukidnon chairman Oscar Maniego said: “It is completely strange why De los Reyes is telling us now that the 77,000 hectares of PALs should be deducted from the total area covered by CARP.”
Alyansa Bukidnon is an affiliate of TFM, which has been pushing De los Reyes to work consistently to reduce the LAD backlog rather than offer excuses for the low accomplishment rate of the DAR on the matter.
Maniego cited the fact that the Manolo Fortich Estate in Bukidnon, considered as PAL, was eventually taken away from the landlords since the areas forming part of the Estate occupied by landowners Carlos Fortich (129.7062 hectares), Ma. Teresa F. Sarraga (101.9025 hectares) and Pilar F. Moraza (95.6843 hectares) were found by the DENR on May 16, 2012 to be untitled PALs.
Neither did these landowners comply with the requirements of RA 9176, forcing the DAR to take over the properties, issue notices of coverage and distribute the properties among landless farmers.
Maniego questioned why De los Reyes is talking about the exclusion of the 77,000 hectares that clearly should have been covered by CARP, with the DENR surveying the properties, listing the claimants and issuing the land classification maps covering the properties.
“The Joint DAR-DENR Memorandum Order covering the compulsory acquisition and distribution of land had been in existence since 1997 and the same order provides the processes for the takeover and disposition of the properties, with purported landowners limited to the 12-hectare retention limit. If De los Reyes had been performing his job well, he should have seen that the memo was for the benefit of CARP and not a mechanism for DENR to take its sweet time processing the properties,” Maniego said.
“He should have taken steps to ask the DENR to take over these properties, have them surveyed and eventually transfer them to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) for coverage under CARP, as what the Joint DENR-DAR Memorandum Circular No. 01-03 issued by then DENR Secretary Elisea Gozun and DAR Secretary Roberto Pagdanganan had intended to do,” he added.
Maniego noted that RA 9176 extends the Free Patent Law up to December 31, 2020, during which time private parties can apply for free patents to land of the public domain occupied for 30 years and classified as alienable and disposable 30 years before the effectivity of RA 9176.
Moreover, the occupants should have paid real estate taxes on these properties, which must not be subject to any adverse claim.
“Since CARP is clear about the 12-hectare retention area for agricultural land, then a joint DAR-DENR memo issued as early as 1997 provided the procedures for the takeover of such properties under the provisions of the agrarian reform law,” Maniego said.
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