THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) provincial office in the City of San Fernando distributed land titles to some 200 residents in the Cristo Rey resettlement area in Capas, Tarlac recently.

The distribution was done in a bid to improve land administration and management and reduce poverty in rural areas.

Tarlac Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer (Penro) Celia Esteban said 70 miscellaneous sales patents covering 7,102 square meters and 215 residential patents covering more than two hectares were distributed to residents and their families at the O’Donnell resettlement site in Capas town.

It may be recalled that Cristo Rey is a community created for Mount Pinatubo victims under Presidential Proclamation 813 called the O’Donnell Resettlement site, issued in 1991.

“Providing families’ ownership over the land they occupied in the form of land titles or patent is the government’s modest contribution in promoting social justice and alleviating poverty in the rural sector,” Esteban said.

She said land administration and management is one of the priority programs of DENR Secretary Roy Cimatu that is anchored in the 10-point socio-economic agenda of President Rodrigo Duterte of ensuring security of land tenure, to encourage investments, and address bottlenecks in land management and titling agencies.

Last year, the DENR distributed a total of 427 agricultural land titles covering 308 hectares and another 3,035 residential land titles covering 76 hectares, benefiting an estimated of well over 15,000 farmers and their families in Central Luzon.

Since 2011, the DENR land distribution program has benefitted around 305,000 farmers and their families from the issuance of 61,132 land titles covering 19,452 hectares in the region.