TACLOBAN CITY—At least 50 farmer leaders from Leyte and Eastern Samar have trooped to Manila on Monday to seek resolution from Commission on Human Rights on their land, shelter and economic problems two years after Super Typhoon ‘‘Yolanda.’’
“Two years after the typhoon wrought havoc, our full recovery is still a far-fetched reality due to the unresolved land and housing property rights issues that affect us,” said Dhon Daganasol, spokesperson for Katarungan- Eastern Visayas, an organization of landless farmers and shelter rights claimants affected by Yolanda.
According to Daganasol, they have been “continuously pushing and campaigning for the release of 12,000 undistributed CLOAs [Certificate of Land Ownership Award] for 14,000 farming families.”
“In January and February, an estimated 1,500 CLOAs have been turned over by the Registry of Deeds [ROD] Region 8 to the Regional Office of the Department of Agrarian Reform [DAR]. ROD Regional Director Atty. Villanoza bared last Friday to leaders of Katarungan Leyte that 6,000 more CLOAs will be turned over to the DAR Region 8 office for release,” the group said in a statement.
The farmers, however, said they remained “wary of the serious issues that need to be threshed out in the said CLOAs.”
“Apart from the undistributed CLOAs, they have other issues that need urgent attention by DAR and Department of Environment and Natural Resources and these are the undocumented Agricultural Leasehold Agreements, Non-classification/non-delineation of lands within the Leyte Sab-A Basin Development Authority area, continuing share tenancy within lands subjected under Presidential Decree 27, so-called distributed but not yet documented titles of which are not yet in the hands of farmers, and uninstalled beneficiaries, among others,” it added.
Meanwhile, Baby Reyes, Rights Network project officer, said “farmers demand a national-level task force to investigate the irregularities in the implementation of Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) in Eastern Visayas and full audit of the CARPER implementation,”
“While for shelter rights, farmers demand provincial level multi-stakeholders committee to oversee the provision of permanent housing for Yolanda survivors, complying with the law and the international standards on adequate housing,” she said.
Reyes maintained that the farmers group “as a whole, demands a program of government from the Presidentiables to address the land, shelter and economic rights of the Yolanda survivors.”