Amid the threat of President Rodrigo Duterte to sack more Department of Agrarian Reform officials or kill them over the slow process of land use conversion, Secretary John Castriciones on Wednesday vowed to fast track applications for conversion of lands to non-agricultural uses as well as the distribution of public lots through a presidential order.
At a news conference, Castriciones, along with Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Office Meinardo Luis Pangulayan, said the agency created a task force last Feb. 6 to look into the 73 applications for land conversion and the coverage of government lands under the agrarian reform program.
“We have [also] drafted an executive order submitted to President Rodrigo Duterte allowing us to expand the agrarian reform program and to cover government-owned lands for purposes of distribution to farmers,” he told reporters.
Earlier, the President axed two DAR officials for taking them two years to process a land conversion case.
He threatened to fire officials from the agency’s conversion office, to file charges or to kill them if they failed to speed up land reform.
The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms [CARPeR] lapsed on June 30, 2014, but land distribution did not stop on private agricultural lands with notices of coverage.
Pangulayan said DAR submitted its report to the President to explain the snail-paced action on the applications for conversion of lands for socialized housing and renewable energy.
Of the 73 land conversion applications, 43 of them are “actually” pending “because we are waiting for the necessary government permits, feasibility study” and other requisites.
According to Pangulayan, DAR has issued Administrative Order No. 01 of 2019 not to accept applications with incomplete required dossiers.
“We reported to the President and he understood DAR’s predicament,” he said.
When asked if heads would still roll at DAR, Castriciones said “what is important is that we very are supportive about the initiative of the President. Of course, he is probably making his own investigation into the matter. We do not want to preempt the President.”
“All that we can say is, as far as we are concerned, whatever initiative we can do to speed up the process to help the farmers and the other stakeholders [we will do so],” he told the Manila Standard.
Meanwhile, Undersecretary for Finance, Management and Administration Office Lucius Junjun Malsi said DAR’s 1,800 employees with a job status as acting officers, officers in charge and those without any plantilla positions have been suffering from demoralization under the government’s rationalization scheme since 2013.
“Unfortunately, we are not yet done with the 1,800 vacant jobs. These employees are just assuming as acting officers and officers in charge. They are [very] demoralized,” he said.
DAR was already able to process 600 vacant positions waiting for Castriciones’ signature, he said, adding “some 200 positions are now for deliberations.”
“We are asking the Commission on Elections to spare us from the election ban. We are expediting this since demoralization is affecting the employees’ productivity,” he said.
Section 261 of the Omnibus Election Code prohibits the appointment of new employees, creation of new position, promotion or giving salary increases during the period of 45 days before a regular election and 30 days before a special election.
The 2019 general election is set on May 13.
As this developed, the CPP branded the president’s land reform program as a huge bogus, saying that the government only distributes “mere real estate transaction dressed up as land reform.”
The communist group made the remark after the President urged the public not to be involved with the communists just to seek land reform.
Duterte has previously said that it would be unnecessary to join the armed struggle under his watch, stressing that he will be the one provide lands to beneficiaries.
“We don’t need the NPA (New People’s Army). Their campaign is to give lands to people. But I can do that too. In fact, I’m already giving it,” the President said in his speech in Buluan, Maguindanao where he distributed hundreds of certificates of land ownership award.
The CPP said Duterte’s promise of giving parcels of lands is a “huge fake,” adding that the government “falsely claims to have distributed 60,000 hectares of land over the past few months.”
“What Duterte is distributing, in fact, are mere documents requiring recipients to regularly pay burdensome amortization fees before they can claim ownership to the land. This is not land distribution. This is a mere real estate transaction dressed up as land reform,” it added.
According to the CPP, more than 90 percent of the so-called beneficiaries failed to pay their dues for more than 30 years under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
“Majority of the peasants and farm workers remain landless while land continues to be concentrated in the hands of a few landlords and foreign plantation owners,” the CPP said.
The leftist group said the government should give lands to those who till the land for free for it to be called “a genuine land reform.”
“They have made the land rich and productive through their labor, but they have been exploited by the owners of the land in the form of onerous land rent to as much as 50-70% of the total produce, usurious interest payments or grossly low wages for farm workers,” it said. “The free distribution of land aims to end this system of exploitation.”
The CPP slammed the Duterte regime for not carrying out “genuine land reform.”
The group believes that the President, who “constrains himself within the limits set by the CARP,” will not dare to change the land property relations in the rural areas through genuine land reform.
“He’s making much noise about carrying out land reform only because he wants to fool the peasant masses, make them give up their cause for genuine land reform, and condemn them to a lifelong of feudal suffering,” the CPP said.
“He’s using the spectacle to conceal the vast land areas he is taking away from the peasants to give to big foreign capitalists for mining, energy, tourism, and other infrastructure projects,” it added.
With his promises, the CPP said Duterte pretends to be a “champion of land reform” by attempting to draw the peasant masses away from the NPA. The President’s remark, according to the communist group, “indirectly acknowledges” the NPA’s role in the so-called “genuine land reform.”
“Under the Revolutionary Guide to Land Reform, the NPA and the revolutionary masses are carrying out the minimum and maximum program for land reform in all guerrilla fronts across the country to the benefit of millions. Victories in land reform strengthen the foundations of the revolutionary government’s political power in thousands of barangays across the country,” it said.
“By carrying out land reform, the NPA continues to gain the deep and wide support of the broad masses of peasants. They are determined to push land reform as it wages protracted people’s war to accumulate strength to overthrow the reactionary state of the big landlord class and big bourgeois compradors,” the CPP said.
On Monday, the President gave 834 CLOAs, covering more than 1,700 hectares, to 780 beneficiaries hailing from 17 Maguindanao municipalities, urging them to make good use of the agricultural lands.
The Chief Executive also directed Castriciones to look for more idle lands, particularly government lots, that farmers could cultivate and generate profit from.
The beneficiaries of the government’s land reform program include tenant-farmers, farm workers, agricultural lessees, and cooperatives within the same barangay or municipality.