CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Some 200 landless farmers on Monday protested the continued defiance of the Department of Agrarian Reform to implement the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in Bukidnon province in northern Mindanao.
The farmers also demanded the resignation of Julio Celestiano, the provincial agrarian reform officer, for his failure to implement CARP in Bukidnon, especially in the estate of the Fortich family.
Rosendo Emat, chairman of the Fortich Farm Landless Farmers Beneficiaries Association and a member of the national peasant federation Task Force Mapalad, accused Celestiano of violating the CARP.
“While the DAR is among the top agencies tasked to fulfil the state’s Constitutional mandate to pursue agrarian reform with the welfare of the landless farmers and farm workers receiving the highest consideration, the department ironically has a top CARP violator within its ranks in the person of Celestiano, who has been tolerating the Fortich family in blocking the implementation of agrarian reform in a landholding that they don’t even own,” Emat said.
The 331-hectare portion of the 1,178-hectare banana, pineapple and papaya plantations in Valencia City consisting of three lots are being claimed by Carlos Fortich and daughters Maria Teresa Zarraga and Pilar Morasa, according to Emat, who said that government records show that the Fortich family is not the registered owners of the lots.
He said in 2006, the DAR, through issuance of notices of coverage, placed the three lots being claimed by the Fortich family under the CARP so these could eventually be distributed to farmer-beneficiaries of the program.
However, in 2011, as the distribution of the lots to beneficiaries neared, the Land Bank of the Philippines refused to value the landholdings and determine the compensation that the government would give to the landowners in exchange for placing their properties under the CARP after it found out that the lots were untitled and not owned by any private individual.
Emat’s allegations cannot be immediately confirmed. (Mindanao Examiner)
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