SOME 7,000 hectares of land in Benguet are up for distribution under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
But these lands remain undistributed as most of it are riddled with cancellation and adjudication cases according to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) while farmer beneficiaries are having difficulty in obtaining these parcels of land which have been awarded through Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA).
DAR Secretary John Castriciones in his visit to the province said in a bid streamline the process of CLOAs issued a memorandum to help farmer beneficiaries.
"The sentiment of the people is CARP has created a debt to the lives of the farmers but it was not overwhelming in the sense that it was not really a successful story," said Castriciones.
Farmer beneficiaries of Barangay Camp 3 in Tuba, Benguet during a meeting with Castriciones request to fast-track the issuance of corrected CLOA which was done in 2011.
Barangay Camp 3 Kagawad Estela Montino said DAR-CAR issued CLOAs in 1994 but were retrieved by the agency through its order in 2007 due to errors. The same office conducted resurvey to correct the errors for the titles be redistributed but to no avail.
Almost 400 hectares were issued under the approved cadastral survey but was later on found out erroneous.
DAR-CAR Assistant Regional Director Robert Ampaguey said almost 200 hectares of the area are titled.
Kapangan Mayor Manny Fermin also asked to release again the CLOA issued in 1993 which cover an area of 1,297 hectares at Barangay Gadang.
Ampaguey, meanwhile, said Kapangan’s case is now being handled by the Office of the Congressman and are still waiting for the action of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) as far as the approval of the proposed division of the three CLOAs issued in Gadang.
Castriciones, meanwhile, said to delineate and hasten the process for distribution, a committee has to beformed to identify government-owned lands which have been idle and have not been utilized for purposes of agriculture for the past 30-40 years.
"We have Executive Orders 407 and 448 which cover government-owned lands but the process is that it has to be turned over to us by DENR or by the government institution concern which has been earlier allocated as property," added Castriciones.