More than a hundred of farmers from Cavite marched along Batasan road yesterday afternoon to join other farmers in Southern Tagalog region who were picketing in front of the House of Representatives for 29-days now.
They are demanding the passage of House Bill No. 3059 or Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill instead of a 5-year extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program that already expired last year.
A farmer leader from Cavite declared that they are harvesting fruits of their labor since denouncing CARP.
“Hundreds of farming families in different villages from the town of Silang in Cavite remains rooted to their land without the benefits of CARP after the fake land reform program failed to give us farmlands,” Renato Belen of Katipunan ng mga Magbubukid sa Kabite said.
Belen is referring to what they call as the bigay-bawi (award and cancel) scheme of Certificate of Land Ownership Award under the government’s land reform program.
According to Belen, Caviteños were among the first beneficiaries of CARP but eventually got frustrated after the Department of Agrarian Reform failed to install them on the awarded land.
They cited the case of Barangay Kaong in Silang where 70 hectares in separate sitios (sub-village) were given to 73 farmers-beneficiaries when Pres. Joseph Estrada and DAR Sec. Boy Morales approved the CLOA generation on May 10, 1999 but in less than a year cancelled it for the reason that the awarding is “untimely”.
In August 2001, the farmers decided to occupy the land and made it productive by planting agricultural crops like palay, cassava, pineapple and coffee in spite of the continuous threat of local policemen and security guards of Kuok Properties Philippines, Inc (KPPI) to displace them.
KPPI is claiming rights to the more than 3,000 hectares of land in Silang and Carmona in Cavite after some farmers in a separate village sold their CLOA as collateral to the land development corporation.
Kamagsasaka-Ka provided other incidents where 500-hectares of farmlands in Bgy. Inchikan, also in Silang were entered into a Joint Venture Agreement but were eventually converted into a high-end residential subdivision by simply declaring the land as “abandoned” and “non-productive”.
“This is not an isolated case in Cavite , thousands of hectares of agricultural land in the region were converted into other uses after DAR approved anomalous application of conversion order,” Imelda Lacandazo, spokesperson of Kasama-TK added.
The farmers picketing in front of the Philippine Congress, Lacandazo said, are determined to remain until the session closes on June and thousands of farmers are expected to join them in time for the first Committee Hearing of H.B. 3059 on May 20, seventeen months after the proposed bill was filed.
The farmers from Cavite will also offer “bottomless” kapeng Barako to the by-passers in front of their Kampuhan (camp-out area) including the employees and Congressmen of the House of Representatives to share their harvest and victory from denouncing CARP.
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