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Friday, March 29, 2024

Leni admits failures in govt land reform

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THE ruling Liberal Party candidate for vice president, Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo, admitted  Friday  that the Aquino administration has failed to distribute land to farmers under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo

The admission comes weeks after a federation of agricultural workers accused President Benigno Aquino III’s family of using a bogus sale of assets to retain ownership and control of the 6,453-hectare Hacienda Luisita and to frustrate the distribution of land to farm workers there.

Robredo, a member of the House committee on agrarian reform, said that many tracts of land intended for distribution were not transferred to the control of farmer-beneficiaries.

“During many of our committee hearings, there were many allegations of corruption insofar as the awarding of lots is concerned,” she said.

Robredo co-authored a bill that seeks to create an Agrarian Reform Commission to investigate “circumvention and violations” of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law.

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Robredo said some 1.2 million to 2.7 million hectares of land that were supposed to be distributed might not have actually been transferred to farmers.

“The creation of an independent commission would benefit agrarian reform beneficiaries, since some of them at present were not receiving the lots that were rightly theirs,” she said.

Robredo added that she was in favor of extending the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law “so that the land could be distributed once and for all.”

Robredo also said the government must do more than merely distribute land, it must help the farmers.

“If we don’t capacitate them, it’s like we’re just wasting time distributing land. This is why in my opinion, the program should be more comprehensive,” Robredo said.

“In Mindoro, the creation of farmers’ cooperatives has been very successful. When you turn them into cooperatives, this becomes a vehicle so that the lands become more contiguous and the cost of development decreases,” she said.

Earlier this month, the Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura disclosed that Aquino’s family sold the Central Azucarera de Tarlac to a businessman, Martin Lorenzo, but the company remains under the control of the family, through the President’s first cousin, Fernando Cojuangco, who is a first cousin of the President.

UMA acting chairman John Milton Lozande said the sale was made to avoid paying back farmer-beneficiaries some P1.33 billion in proceeds from the sale of lands in Hacienda Luisita and to abort the distribution of land to farmers and farmworkers.

After the sale last year, Lorenzo named Cojuangco the president and chief operating officer of CAT.

Using CAT, which is within the Hacienda Luisita estate, Cojuangco immediately acquired shares of other Aquino-Cojuangco firms such as the Luisita Realty Corp. and Luisita Industrial Park Co. through the CAT Resource and Asset Holdings Inc. This effectively made the Aquino-Cojuangco family the real owners of Hacienda Luisita, Lozande said.

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