Sunday, May 4, 2008 [ philstar.com ]
At least 117,000 of agricultural lands across the country has been converted to housing, commercial and industrial uses in the last 20 years, a top official of the Chamber of Real Estate Builders Association said yesterday.
Regis Romero II, CREBA president told reporters during the weekly Kapihan sa Sulo Hotel in Quezon city that the converted areas include rice producing lands particularly in Central Luzon which was once the rice granary of the Philippines.
“The agricultural lands were turned into housing, commercial industrial and economic free zones all over the country,” he said.
Regis, however, denied that rice lands covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program was among those converted to high-end housing projects in Pampanga.
He said he is not aware of any CARP land in Pampanga that has been converted into housing projects.
A realty broker has earlier exposed that rice producing lands covered by operation land transfer and Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) were sold to a big real estate company which is now selling luxury homes in Pampanga.
Louie Hipolito, a real estate broker, said that the illegal transfer of CARP lands in Pampanga was already investigated by the Department of Agrarian Reform and recommendations have been made for the filing of criminal charges against those involved, among them high government officials.
He alleged that prime rice fields particularly those along the highways were sold by owners at high prices despite the ban on the sale or transfer of CLOA to other persons except beneficiaries, government or the Landbank which paid for the distributed lands.
Hipolito said at least 500 hectares or 80 percent of the once rice producing lands in the town of Mexico, Pampanga, mostly covered by CARP are now titled under the names of big subdivisions in the area.
He said he accidentally discovered the anomaly when he conducted a research of land titles which was coursed to him for conversion from agricultural to industrial areas to pave the way for the development of high-end housing projects in the targeted areas.
Hipolito said he was able to facilitate the conversion of land titles from agricultural to industrial category, however, when he traced the origin of the land titles. Hipolito said he found out that the areas covered were actually lands purchased by the Landbank to be distributed to farmer beneficiaries of CARP.
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