To beef up the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) capability to support farmer-beneficiaries and complete land acquisition and distribution of 500,000 hectares of agricultural land, Secretary Conrado Estrella III is requesting the Department of Budget and Management to create new positions for program officers and to promote program technologists.
The recruitment of more field personnel and the promotion would strengthen vigorous rural development campaigns, he said.
He said there is a need to hire 96 agrarian reform program officers I (ARPOs I) and to upgrade 344 agrarian reform program technologists (ARPTs) positions to ARPO I.
“The move is intended to beef up the agency’s development facilitators, who are made up of ARPTs, whose upgrading into ARPOs 1 is meant to motivate them to give their all in helping the agrarian reform beneficiaries attain greater farm productivity,” the DAR chief said.
The support services staff and development facilitators would serve as frontliners to cater to the needs of beneficiaries of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
“So far, 312 vacant co-terminus positions are being finalized before opening them for hiring. Once filled up, the successful applicants will be deployed in the rural areas where they are needed the most to share their expertise in boosting agricultural productivity as envisioned by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.,” Estrella said.
DAR is slowly but steadily veering toward providing the much-needed support services to the farmer-beneficiaries to increase their harvest, augment their income and spur rural development since only about a hundred thousand hectares of “workable” private agricultural lands are still up for distribution in areas under its jurisdiction.
Workable private farm lands refer to those with no legal impediment, with the landowners having already expressed their willingness to work with DAR for the acquisition and redistribution of their properties to the landless farmers.
At present, there are 500,000 hectares of farms for distribution in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao, while 300,000 of them have been classified as problematic with various courts proceedings.
At least 100,000 hectares of farmlots are under the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agrarian Reform in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The President, who is the secretary of the Department of Agriculture in concurrent capacity, promised to exhaust all means to help transform the Philippines into the leading agricultural resource hub in the world.
Meanwhile, Undersecretary for Finance Management and Administration Jeffrey Galan said DAR has already lifted the moratorium on the filling up of vacant positions at the central, regional and provincial offices.
The agency suspended the filling up of vacancies “to allow the Department to have a clear nationwide picture of the vacancies, position profiles and such other relevant personnel information.”