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Friday, August 18, 2006
Carp land transfer stalled anew
By Syril G. Repe
STA. CATALINA, Negros Oriental -- Thirty farmer-beneficiaries belonging to the Villareal-Caranoche Farmers' Association lamented a Court of Appeals decision stopping the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) from installing them Monday on the land they have been tilling for almost 20 years.
The land in question involves 60 hectares of the estate of third district Congressman Herminio G. Teves straddling Barangay Caranoche in Sta. Catalina and Barangay Villareal in Bayawan City.
Rolando Flores, president of the association, echoed his colleagues' disappointment after Provincial Sheriff III Edwin Arnado of the DAR Adjudication Board (Darab) informed them that the installation would not push through on August 14 due to the temporary restraining order issued by CA's 20th Division in Cebu City on August 11.
"This is DAR's program for those who till the lands to be able to own them, but where is the justice here?" Flores said.
The association leader believed that the delay could be attributed to the desire of the former owners to continue to avail of the products.
Flores explained that the estate covers ricefields and coconut and sugar cane plantations of which 33 hectares to be distributed to 19 farmers are on the Caranoche side and 28 hectares for 11 farmers are in Villareal.
He said the beneficiaries have been tilling the land since 1988.
He added that the farmers were to have been installed in 1998 after the government acquired the Teves estate through its comprehensive agrarian reform program (Carp).
Meanwhile, Arnado said Darab was poised to install the farmers last Monday through a writ of execution, but that on the way to Sta. Catalina, he received a call from DAR about the CA's order to stop it.
"I am suppose to install them but then it did not push through because of the temporary restraining order. I just followed the law," said Arnado.
Arnado said the beneficiaries must wait for another 60 days more before any development on the land question was settled.
The court order followed a petition of 21 other farmers last July 26, asking the CA to stop the installation claiming that they would be "divested, dispossessed, or ejected from the land they possess, cultivate and occupy" if the Darab's writ of execution was enforced.
The petitioners that included Caranoche barangay Captain Alfonso Olam argued that they also have the right to be named as farmer-beneficiaries because they had been tilling the land even before the enactment of Carp.
However, they said, DAR did not name, identify, or institute them as beneficiaries when DAR placed the property under Carp coverage.
"It instead named and instituted the private respondents who are not even farmers, much less farm workers on the land," the petitioners stressed.
(August 17, 2006 issue)
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