MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / Nov. 26, 2012) – Filipino farmers demanding land distribution under the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program said they will march to the street to press President Benigno Aquino to fulfil his promise to them.
Aquino promised the farmers in Negros Occidental in June this year that he would speed up the land acquisition and distribution component of CARP and issue notices of coverage to private agricultural land ranging from 10 hectares to 25 hectares.
The President also directed Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes to carry out his order.
At least 10,000 farmers, all under Task Force Mapalad, are expected to join the march.
TFM-Negros president Alberto Jayme explained that Negros farmers welcomed the President’s vow but five months after that meeting “De los Reyes has apparently been working at cross-purposes with the President’s directive since his accomplishment rating has gone down to 8 percent in northern Negros Occidental and 5 percent in the southern section of the province.”
Jayme said the farmers will be marching anew to remind the President that “they want him to complete the distribution of land and fulfil his other promises.”
He said the poor performance of De los Reyes “is an indication of his failure to make DAR personnel work with the zeal required by the President.”
“It is apparent De los Reyes is not doing his best to dismantle all the snags in LAD and he is getting bogged down on the legal technicalities that have become the very reason for the delay in land distribution,” Jayme said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
Jayme said CARP should be completed as promised by the President, but De los Reyes claimed that as early as July that the DAR would be unable to meet the targets that the department had set for the entire year.
True enough, DAR Assistant Secretary Jose Grajeda admitted in a meeting with Negros farmers recently that it would be impossible to distribute 43,161 hectares of land in Negros Occidental that include the 2011 backlog of 16,233 hectares.
DAR has said that 130,000 hectares of land in Negros Occidental are up for distribution, half of them within the next six months. Nationwide, the DAR’s target for LAD this year is 180,851 hectares.
Jayme noted that nationwide, the DAR record from January 2012 to October 31, 2012 was only 18 percent, worse than its batting average of 21.24 percent for the first seven months of the year.
For this year, the target of De los Reyes is to distribute 180,851 hectares but his backlog along is a high 74,650 hectares.
If De los Reyes wants to meet his target and clean up the slate for next year, he should subject a total of 255,501 hectares to LAD.
However, the actual area distributed from January to October 31 was only 45,392 hectares, or only 18 percent of the target, including the backlog.
Worse, for the first three quarters of this year, the accomplishment of De los Reyes in northern Negros Occidental was only 871 hectares, with another 229 considered as non-CARP areas, for a total of 1,099 hectares.
Since the current target for that section of the province is 17,483 hectares, the DAR’s official accomplishment rate is only 5 percent.
With the backlog of 10,539 hectares added, or 28,022 hectares, the rate would only be a puny 3 percent.
DAR’s performance in southern Negros Occidental is similarly dismal, with only 780 hectares distributed, or 8 percent, compared to the 2012 goal of 9,445 hectares.
However, the backlog in southern Negros Occidental was 5,694 hectares, putting the total land area to be distributed at 15,139 hectares.
All these figures show that instead of increasing LAD significantly after the meeting with President Aquino, the reverse happened, with De los Reyes and the provincial DAR office in Negros Occidental actually lagging behind their own targets.
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