Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones on Wednesday directed all Department of Agrarian Reform field officials to “distribute all land titles now.”
He said he is hell-bent on clearing his vaults of land titles as he pressed all his field officials to distribute them all as soon as possible.
He, however, clarified, however, exempted from the deadline are those land titles that are already scheduled for distribution at a later date.
He issued the directive in a special online meeting attended by all 15 regional directors in a move aimed at giving justice to the agrarian reform beneficiaries, who have been longing for years for their “most sought-after land titles”—the certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) and emancipation patents.
“I want you to distribute all undistributed land titles now,” he said.
According to DAR, there are 95,546 CLOAs and EPs combined that have remained under the custody of various offices all over the country.
Castriciones convened the special meeting himself, following the discovery of 2,034 undistributed land titles, which were stuck up in sacks inside the Land Transfer Implementation Division of the DAR-Cebu provincial office recently.
“More than anything else, we owe it to our beneficiaries, many of whom are already aged and past their prime to even enjoy tilling their respective farmlots,” he said.
He lamented seeing ageing beneficiaries, some of them could hardly walk on their own just to receive their land titles.
He said he could only shake his head in dismay.
“When there were able-bodied men and women who came to receive the land titles, they identified themselves as either sons, daughters or in-laws of the original beneficiaries,” he added.