THE Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Negros Occidental-North has conducted a two-day training on basic accounting for its development facilitators at the agency’s Provincial Office’s Conference Room in Bacolod City recently.
The activity was a continuous capacity development training for the field development facilitators, who are the manpower extension of the support services team in assisting the agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in their daily farming financial records and transactions.
Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer I Milagros Flores, in a statement, said they want their staff to perform their assigned tasks effectively particularly on assessing the status of the operations of agrarian reform beneficiaries organizations (Arbos).
Flores said technical assistance and proper monitoring and coaching of the vast number of the assisted Arbos in the northern portion of Negros Occidental were underscored during the training.
Rizalina Yuguing, officer-in-charge chief Agrarian Reform Program Officer of the Program Beneficiaries Development Division (PBDD), said all of the field personnel are the department's frontline team.
Yuguing said they work on ensuring the delivery of the necessary and appropriate support services to its assisted and qualified ARBs.
“With the mandate to ensure delivery of the necessary and appropriate support services to qualified ARBs, the identified development facilitators hold an essential role in the success of our ARB organizations,” she added.
The development facilitators, along with the PBDD-based rural development facilitators, share the responsibilities to sustain a total of 224 Arbos.
Their primary task includes organizing the ARBs to form themselves into an organization, capacitate them and eventually ready them to qualify and access various support services offered by the DAR and other government agencies.
Since 2012, the PBDD has been implementing the Land Tenure Improvement-Program Beneficiaries Development (LTI-PBD) Integration Strategy as provided in Administrative Order 5 Series of 2009.
This is on top of the priority list to further provide and enhance the capability of Arbo officers and members for them to effectively and efficiently manage their respective organizations.
DAR-Negros Occidental I said a great number of Arbos formed and organized will continue to increase as one of the agency’s mandates is to reach out to the organizations and provide them with appropriate and necessary support services to secure a better quality of life.
At present, the PBDD has assisted 224 operational Arbos and the number continues to grow annually, it said.
“The DAR is mandated to provide the ARBs continuous institutional and enterprise development training and workshops to ensure the sustainability of the programs and projects,” it added.