About 200 farmers from five towns of Negros Occidental staged a protest at the Department of Agrarian Reform office in Bacolod City on Thursday, Nov. 21, to call on the agency to proceed with coverage of all pending landholdings and distribute them to agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in the province.
Task Force Mapalad said that the impact of delayed landowner compensation has been affecting about 4,499 ARBs who remain landless.
TFM said that in Negros Occidental 297 landholdings covering 6,287.64 hectares have not yet been fully paid.
They called on the DAR provincial and municipal offices to comply with the orders released by the agency’s central office to proceed with coverage of all pending landholdings despite listing some as erroneous and problematic.
“It has been at least a decade that these landholdings have been stalled in the land acquisition and distribution (LAD) process since issuance of notices of coverage”, the statement said.
TFM claimed that given the allocated budget for landowner’s compensation from 2022 to 2024 is P1,076,641,000, only 10,766 hectares can be acquired by the government for distribution in three years.
“An average of only 3,589 hectares can be purchased a year, which makes fulfilling the promise of finishing LAD with a total balance of 507,575 hectares within his administration impossible,” TFM added.*