Task Force Mapalad farmers staged a rally in front of the Department of Agrarian Reform Provincial Office (DARPO) in Bacolod City on Thursday, Dec. 19, to urge President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella to attend to the landless farmers in Negros Occidental.
TFM President Teresita Tarlac, in a press statement, said that since the last Notices of Coverage issued in 2014, many farmworkers in Negros Occidental have remained landless for at least a decade.
“Many of us have grown old waiting decades for land. Some have died leaving behind their children still fighting for agrarian reform,” Tarlac said.
The rally coincided with a DAR event at the Cadiz City Arena where the agency led the distribution of electronic titles of individual Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (e-titles) to agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) under the World Bank-financed Support to Parcelization towards Individual Titling (SPLIT).
TFM said these e-titles do not mean that new lands are being awarded to ARBs, but that lands collectively issued in previous administrations have now been parcelized and individualized.
The current administration has been the slowest in land distribution with 10,738 hectares annually, TFM said.
“Past administrations had an average of 30,697 hectares annually and given the rate of accomplishment of the Marcos Jr. administration, LAD can be completed within 47 years”, TFM added.
Tarlac said agrarian reform should not be subject to political compromises with landowners.*