Saturday, September 06, 2008 Honasan welcomes bishops' view on Carp extension By Cong B. Corrales
SENATOR Gregorio Honasan, chair of the Senate committee on agrarian reform, welcomed Friday the concerns of the Catholic bishops but said there is a need to study its extension.
Honasan said they would take into account the inputs from the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) who had pushed for the extension of the agrarian reform program in the country.
"It's a long and continuous struggle but we cannot just fold under pressure. We will take the CBCP's input into consideration but we will not base our decision with only their input," Honasan told reporters.
Honasan arrived in Cagayan de Oro City on Friday to speak to the 1st Regional Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries (ARB) Cooperative Summit.
He said the Senate is bent on extending the agrarian reform, which is set to expire by the end of this year.
The CBCP said extending the program is necessary to address poverty in the countryside.
"We ask that the Carp (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program), defective as it is, be finally completed next year as it has been targeted. And if it is not sufficiently implemented by then, the program should be further extended and funded more seriously and generously. But we ask that the law itself must be reviewed and improved," the CBCP said in a pastoral letter issued on January 28, 2007.
The bishops said farmers migrating to the cities to escape rural poverty are adding to the burgeoning urban problems.
"The greater number of our poor is in the rural areas. The poor abound in our cities too, and we must be as concerned for them as for our rural poor. But if the urban poor are growing in numbers, it is largely because of rural folk crowding into our cities to escape the debilitating poverty of the countryside. It seems obvious then that to attend to the first problem (rural poverty) would be to help lessen the second (urban poverty)," the CBCP said.
House bill 4077 that would extend the program is still pending in Congress.
Partylist Representative Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel said the bill muster enough support in Congress but 50 congressmen have chosen not to attend when it was deliberated in the floor.
