THE Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Negros Occidental-North ranked second in terms of certificate of land ownership award (Cloa) registration nationwide.
The DAR Central Office made the announcement during the 2020 Year-End Summative Assessment and 2021 Planning Conference held in Palo, Leyte recently.
DAR-Negros Occidental I has a total Cloas registration for a total of 1,843.8924 hectares.
These were awarded and distributed to 2,022 agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in northern portion of the province for Calendar Year (CY) 2020.
DAR Secretary John Castriciones, along with other officials of the agency, led the four-day activity on March 1 to 4.
Third-level officials of the regional and provincial offices also gathered to evaluate the department's performance and ensure satisfactory rate in terms of budget utilization.
Officer-in-charge Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer II Teresita Mabunay, who represented DAR-Negros Occidental I along with Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer I Milagros Flores, said they were able to live to the department's vision despite the challenges brought by the pandemic.
Mabunay said the agency works on providing a just, safe and equitable society that upholds the rights of tillers to own, control, secure, cultivate and enhance their agricultural lands, improve their quality of life towards rural development and national industrialization.
"Everyone in northern Negros Occidental has become even more inspired to serve the farmers in the province," she added.
One of the major activities during the conference was to formulate the 2021 operational strategies of the DAR to sustain an effective and efficient delivery of its services to its farmer-beneficiaries and other stakeholders amid the prevailing coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic.
The agency said that all participants in the CY 2020 National Summative Assessment and CY 2021 Planning Conference underwent RT-PCR test pursuant to the protocols of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases set for the conduct of official gatherings and meetings.
The DAR is the lead government agency that holds and implements comprehensive and genuine agrarian reform.
It seeks to actualize equitable land distribution, ownership, agricultural productivity, and tenurial security for the tillers of the land towards the improvement of the quality of their lives, it added.